


Out of the Woods

by noseforahtwo



Series: A Lonely House [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, MA tag for later, Slow Burn, spoilers for Blackwall's storyline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2018-04-28 07:49:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5083762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noseforahtwo/pseuds/noseforahtwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evelyn Trevelyan and the man known as Warden Blackwall.<br/>If you haven't played Blackwall's storyline, this will spoil it utterly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Lake

  
"Remember how to carry your shields. You're not hiding, you're holding. Otherwise it's useless." They weren't much, but he had them convinced the consequences of disobeying him would be worse than any bandit's blade. If they needed to be afraid to fight, so be it. They'd feel like heroes after. He waved away a cloud of gnats and nodded at them approvingly. They shifted around, scared but determined. Good enough.  


"Blackwall? Warden Blackwall?"  


The sound of a woman's voice was so unexpected he rushed to face her coming off the rickety pier. What in Maker's name was a Marcher woman doing out here with a dwarf, an elf, and a Seeker?  


There wasn’t time for this nonsense, but he knew in his bones it was no good - someone looking for the Warden by name. The creak of a bowstring from back in the trees made his hair stand on end. In the half a second of the arrow’s flight, he almost stepped back, let it find its target - probably in the woman’s throat.  


But his arm came up. Better to see what was afoot. He could always cut them down and run after.  


She flinched at the splinters but her eyes narrowed in anger as she looked for the source and got hold of the bow on her back.  


“That’s it!” he snarled, waving her aside. “Help or get out, we’re dealing with these idiots first.”  


There wasn't much to it. His conscripts, such as they were, did little more than shout and make threatening motions. But they did it more or less in sync, so that was something.  
The Seeker was ferocious, and that dwarf knew what he was doing. The edge of more than one unneeded protective spell slicked over him as Digger, formerly Private Salim - he was certain it was him, the ginger prick - tried to take his head off. The mage was focused on the Lady, of course.  


She was green afterward. Awkwardly, she lifted the head of a groaning lad half buried in muck near the water, her face turned away. The groaning stopped with the gurgle of punctured lungs before she pulled two bolts from his ribs, her foot on his shoulder. The Marcher Lady looked relieved, knee walking a few yards away until she sat with her back to the body.  


She’d lost her hat in the scuffle. Her nose was sunburned; a good crop of freckles dusted her pale cheeks. He could tell the cobbler had spent a month on her boots. A rich lady kitted out for grand adventure, bodyguards in tow. Not accustomed to killing. Shooting straw dummies, maybe, but Maker knows it isn't the same thing.  


He left his sword where he’d jabbed it into the soft ground and went to see what she was on about. It was no good talking to bodyguards. He’d been one often enough to know that you spoke to the _money_ first, if you didn’t want to say everything twice.  


Time to see what the Marches wanted with Blackwall.  


The dwarf stepped into his shadow, crossbow balanced on a meaty shoulder. "Just give her a minute, Warden. The Herald's a little wobbly once the action's died down."  


"She's the one who walked out of the Fade?" He'd heard the farmers talking excitedly about a beautiful woman emerging from the crater at the Conclave, glowing with magic like a golden icon. If anything her hair was bronze, and while he could say she wasn’t a chore to look at, she wasn't the sort of thing bards tell tales about.  


"The very same.” The stout little man nodded and laughed, “But Lady Trevelyan would rather we didn't call her the 'H word'."  


"Doesn't look like she's done this much."  


 What did the sole survivor of the ruined Conclave want with a Warden recruiter? Too old to be a daughter. But she could be anything between twenty and forty. Noblewomen don't age like poor folk.  


_Maker's Breath, had the Warden Constable been bedding this lady?_  


Didn't seem likely; he'd been fifty if he was a day, running to fat under the armor, and hadn't seemed the sort who would talk a noblewoman at least fifteen years his junior into his bedroll. Or any woman, for that matter.  


"Yeah. It's been a weird couple of weeks for everybody." The dwarf called over his shoulder to where the Lady was still motionless in a blotch of shade, head between her knees. "You okay, there? Not going to throw up are you?"  


"I'm fine, Varric. But thank you for the reminder." Wiping the arrows on the grass at her side, she looked around until she'd spotted him and held a hand beside her eyes to block the glare coming off the water. "You are Warden Blackwall, aren't you?"  


"Why do you know my name?"  


He closed the distance between them, the tight itchy fear of exposure crawling up his scalp as he pulled off his helm.  


The Seeker edged closer to them, her own helmet under her shield arm. He kept his hands where the dark-haired woman could see them, but made no other sign he’d noticed her watching him _. Jumpy, that one_. But there was nothing in the Herald’s manner that said she was anything other than sick to her stomach and determined to grit her teeth and carry on.  


"Who are you?"  


“Evelyn Trevelyan.” She made a face that might have been a smile. “I am an agent of the Inquisition, for the moment. I - _We_ are investigating whether the disappearance of the Wardens has anything to do with the murder of the Divine.”  


From there on it was a jumble of lies and half truths, talking quickly, thinking in fits and starts while those pale Marcher eyes so much like his own watched him feint her probing questions. She had the cut glass accent of Ostwick and made the kind of prolonged eye contact that said she wasn’t accustomed to suspicion. Not once did she attempt to stand, waving away his offered hand.  


She showed a little interest in the treaties, which he had used sparingly. Blackwall hadn’t flashed them around much, so neither did he.  No need for the farmers to start a fuss over a Warden getting greedy when there was no Blight on.  


The Seeker perked up too, at the mention of them. So they needed conscripts or supplies, or both to close the hole in the sky.  


Then she was done with him. Lady Trevelyan stood, shouldered her quiver, thanked him for his time guardedly and brushed grass from the seat of her trousers.  


He’d not had enough good answers. Watching her guards gather round to walk away the panic came back. Here he stood with four bodies, at least one of them looking for his old Captain. There would be more.  


“Inquisition…agent did you say? Hold a moment.”  


She turned back, as did the elf. He made his case pretty well, if he was still any judge of people after so many seasons out in the woods like a hermit.  


“The Inquisition has soldiers already.” The Lady brushed wisps of hair from her forehead, giving him a once over like he was a horse on the auction block.  


She came nearer and he found himself fighting back a scowl. Strange young women don’t crowd a man his size in full armor. There were lines around her eyes and the kind of thoughtful quiet frown you didn’t see on a flighty girl’s face. Maybe not so young, then. She was close enough now to smell on the breeze. Lemons, oiled leather and soap.  


“What can one Grey Warden do?” Her eyes flicked away, to the faint green clouds over the Frostbacks.  


“Save the fucking world, if pressed!”  


He had finally given her the right answer. 

“A man after my own heart.” Taking her once-very fine glove off, she tucked it under an arm and offered him her pale hand. “Welcome to the Inquisition, Warden Blackwall.”  


Hastily baring his own, he took it, surprised when she shook firmly. Out of long forgotten habit, he’d been about to bend low over her knuckles. She knew it too, and smiled as she clasped his scraped rough paw against her soft palm.  


“I’ll warn you, it looks like we might have to. Save the world, I mean.”  


The greedy, conniving man he’d tried to kill with cold, poverty, and solitude sat up and took notice. At the touch of this fair-haired, pale eyed Marcher woman who was out to save the world a shiver of dread caught his spine.  


She would probably manage it. Afterward there would be bowing and scraping and _mountains_ of tribute around Evelyn Trevelyan - and Thom wanted his share.


	2. Put a bell on her.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’d lost any gift he once had for small talk. It wasn’t as though he could pat her ass and ask for a pint, which was the sum total of his interaction with women on the rare time he found himself in a tavern._

They weren’t a bad little troop. Lacking in noise discipline, but seeing as how they insisted on taking the road all the way to Redcliffe he couldn’t get shirty about talking. Anybody who cared to post a scout would see them coming, but lately all the trouble had been off in the valleys. Mages stayed hunkered down in caves, hiding from straggling Templar units looking for a fight. There was a horse for him, so they’d been optimistic at least that he’d come along.

The thought that they wanted him - wanted Blackwall - for something more specific wouldn’t leave him alone. But the elf rarely spoke, the Marcher Lady was easily discouraged by a curt answer to her questions, and Seeker Cassandra spent most of the afternoon telling the dwarf to shut up.

He was the one to watch. Varric, out of Kirkwall. Full of himself and sharp-eyed too. A liar knew another liar. So he dodged the questions until the little man gave up with a good-natured shrug.

“You don’t want to talk about yourself, I can respect that, but then _what do we_ talk about?”

“Err,” he cast about along the road, squinting into the dappled shade for inspiration. “I don’t suppose you follow jousting?”

By the time a good spot to camp came along, he’d spoken more than in the last year combined. 

Alone he was himself but a village, an inn - even a campfire with three old drifters huddled around it meant he had to claw the Warden’s corpse back around him. Scraps of gossip and vague allusions to secrecy had always gotten him through. But if he was to be with these people any length of time, he’d have to pace himself. 

 

Tying a hogshead on a line, he watched from the corner of his eye as Solas helped the Herald with one of the other tents. She yanked back on a guy line with a frustrated huff, keeping her left hand tucked up to her chest, wincing when the line was tight and the canvas taut. The mage made a move toward her but she shook her head and let her hand drop, opened and closed her fist a few times.

“It’s all right. A little sore, that’s all.”

She shot him a look where he knelt by his pack and ducked under the eave of her tent with her own bag. The shadows inside were lit up with an eerie green fire. It made his skin crawl. He spent the evening whittling while they talked around him; trying not to look at her hand.

At sunrise the Herald was sitting on a log nursing a mug of tea and huddled under two blankets. The Seeker was already breaking down their tent, a frown of concentration pulling the scar on her cheek tight. Ridiculous. The fucking _Right Hand of the Divine_ had made him porridge, and she was fetching and carrying for a Bann’s daughter.

It had been so long since he was in the company of educated women, he hardly trusted himself to open his mouth. Lucky for him these two left him to his tea and porridge, though Lady Trevelyan took his empty bowl with her glowing green hand and caught him staring.

“Don’t worry.” She swallowed the last of her tea. “It’s only been dangerous for me so far.” 

“Dangerous?”

She wrapped her blankets tighter and tucked both hands out of sight as a gust of wind hit them.

Her hair was loose, halfway to her waist and fuzzed up on one side like she was a fitful sleeper. All the Osties from Good Family had her same washed-out coloring. You could see the sun passing through them, practically. It was plain they’d thinned their blood down to nothing marrying each other for the last three ages.   
Every good thing in Thedas passed through Ostwick’s ports but the people who owned the ships, the markets, and probably the damned water, they kept to themselves in walled gardens and pink stone manors patrolled by vicious, stupid dogs - the four and the two-legged kind.

“It’s probably not going to kill me,” she said. “Solas assured me. Well, not assured, he _did_ say probably.” She smiled a little - gallows humor. It looked odd coming from a woman who’d never had to lift a hand for herself.

“What is it?” He couldn’t stop himself asking. He’d heard all manner of things from the farmers in the last two weeks.

“I wish I could tell you. Solas is a better one to ask” The sun was coming up now, and she gave him a warning look. “But don’t unless you have an hour to kill listening to his magical theory on the Veil.”

He’d lost any gift he once had for smalltalk. It wasn’t as though he could pat her arse and ask for a pint, which was the sum total of his interaction with women on the rare time he found himself in a tavern. 

They stopped at noon to stretch their legs and water the horses. After a few minutes of listening to the Herald mutter and cajole, he left his own gelding to drink and ran a hand along her mare’s flank.

She let go of the horse’s ankle with a huff and stood up straight. “She’s been hopping every so often, and I swear she knows what I want, why else would I be pulling on her damned leg? Would you, please?” She pointed and stepped back.

Not a ‘horsey’ sort of noblewoman, then. The mare was obliging once her rider was out of the way, and as he picked at a stone lodged against its shoe, he asked, “These rifts Varric talked about - you can stop them?”

“Er, yes.” Lady Trevelyan unwound her scarf then dipped it in the stream and wrung it out. “It isn’t me, so much as this,” she wiggled her hand and shrugged, then wiped the back of her neck and face. 

“I heard-” Done with the horse’s hoof, he had nothing to keep his hands busy. He dusted his gloves off and looked over the tree line, to the green clouds over the mountains. 

“You heard?” 

He shook his head, tightened his bracers. “Not my business, Lady Trevelyan.”

She laughed, like it was honestly funny. “Warden, I can’t imagine what you might have heard about the woman with the magical parasite.”

“Parasite? That’s not it.” He could feel himself scowling, and she held her hand out, palm up, so he could see the scar. It wasn’t shining. It looked like a bad cut that hadn’t healed well, except it was the wrong color. “It’s Andraste’s work.”

“Says who?” She was still smiling, so he hadn’t managed to step in it too badly. “I woke up like this. You would think Andraste could have left me with a memory or two, perhaps a note? It's done its best to kill me and I've been eating like mad, and it aches worse than a bad tooth. But I can't be rid of it. _Parasite._ ”

She slipped past him and took the mare’s bridle before it could graze in earnest, leading it to the water with a few pats on the neck. She took her hat off and twisted the hair that had gotten out of her braids around a finger, her back to him.

“We need mages to close the breach,” she said to the stream, hands busy in her hair. “And hopefully someone in Redcliffe has a few ideas about my _gift._ ”

“Apostates? Can’t trust them.”

“They have no reason to trust anyone, either.” She mumbled around a hairpin in her mouth as she untangled her hair from the clasp of a gold chain that had been hidden under her scarf. “But they asked to talk. That’s something. They deserve a chance to govern themselves, after this is over.”

How much had her sleek armor cost? It wasn’t good for much against a blade, but it was obviously enchanted to the Void and back. She looked over her shoulder and caught him watching her.

“Of course, my lady,” he blurted, taking his eyes off her ass. It didn’t seem like the time to say how badly Free All The Mages was likely to go. 

The deference he heard in his own voice made him ill. He didn’t owe anything to her kind, not anymore. 

_Maker_ , two days and two women in skin tight leathers and he was already tripping over his own tongue. Too long in the woods, for certain. A beaky Ostie twat and... while the Seeker was an eyeful, the kindest word he could come up with was stern. He’d had better standards once - and better choices. 

Slinging himself up into the saddle, he squared his shoulders and rode behind the Seeker the rest of the day. The Chantry shield on her back and plate armor at least kept the most interesting parts out of sight.

They were all determined to be talkative…friendly. At dusk he feigned interest in a cave not far from the camp they set - just to be alone. So he could stop feeling that nervous itch between his shoulder blades. He was poking around, looking for any signs of nugs to add to supper, when he heard the bear. Not in with him, but not far off either. Maker’s Balls, he could hear the dwarf shouting, and his crossbow cracking away. 

By the time he ran into the fight, the damned thing was on three legs and looked like a pincushion, with part of somebody’s tent caught in its claws. He watched the Seeker circling it and waved an arm at the Lady and Varric, who let their weapons drop. If this Cassandra wasn’t going to get in there and finish it off, he would. 

“Now what are you going to do with it?” He jabbed his bloody sword into the ground and leaned heavily on it, winded from his sprint back. “This is why you don’t kill one ten feet from your camp.”

Cassandra wiped her sword on the grass and prodded the animal’s shaggy haunches. “There are hungry refugees on the road.”

He felt himself staring at the Seeker, speechless at her idiocy. No one else contradicted her, so he stood up straight and wiped his sweaty forehead. “You have any idea how long it would take one man to part out a brown bear?”

She got narrow-eyed and crossed her arms over the eyeball on her breastplate. “I bet you’re going to tell me.”

_Daft bint._ “If I started this instant, I might just be done by sundown tomorrow.”

“This animal could feed fifty people!”

He turned back to the Lady. Everyone seemed to look to her for decisions. She tossed a rag at the dwarf, who used it to wipe what looked like mud - but judging from the expression on his bristly face, was probably wet bear shit - from his chest.

“Cassandra has a point,” she said, looking at the bear fallen in the sand.

“ _She_ can bloody well skin it then.” He rolled the tension out of his neck until his bones popped. 

“We’ll all be happy to help,” the Lady stared at the mage, who didn’t much look like he wanted to.

“Good.” He bit off the word and shucked his gloves, throwing them down on top of his shield. 

“First, two of you will need to move camp a quarter mile upwind. Then you, the Seeker and Varric can spend tonight and tomorrow killing every scavenger and mabari for ten miles when they catch the scent of bear guts. I'll need the mage casting barrier spells all night to stave off hypothermia."

“Hypothermia?” 

At her nonplussed look, he unbuckled his sword belt. "I'll be doing it stripped to the skin. Either that or burn my clothes when I'm finished. Nothing - nothing - smells worse than a bear carcass." 

Lady Trevelyan glanced at his hands on his buckle, went pink and looked at the tents then back at him, her mouth pulled into a pout. 

“And here I was worried there wouldn’t be anything nice to look at the whole time,” she snapped.

That wrong-footed him enough that he gawped at her as she stepped past him and sighed, her back to him now. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at the still-twitching paw in front of her. 

“You’re right.” There was apology or embarrassment in her voice, but he just cinched his belt and waited. With a big sigh, she backed up a few steps. He could smell her again, lemons and leather and girl-sweat as she said sadly, “There isn’t time, and no good way to get it to the ones who could use it.” Looking back to the elf, “Solas can burn it. What a waste.”

***

There were demons the third day. Spindly stick figures that shrieked and bounced from one spot to the next. No time to think about it, but that was how he liked a fight to go.

What he _didn’t_ like was idiot women wandering through and getting themselves clouted with an elbow to the head. He couldn’t look back, not and keep the things off. 

“Easy, Hero!” Varric shouted as Lady Trevelyan cursed and scrabbled to her feet behind him. 

“Get out, woman!”

“Move, Blackwall!” 

A hand on his collar, pulling backward. She was gasping for breath, tugging at the leather strap over his shoulder. Giving ground to these things wasn’t an option. A quick look around and he could see the dwarf was laying down cover for Solas, and Cassandra had lured two wraiths away from the flashing hole in the air the Herald was trying her damnedest to drag him into.

“Daft bint, get back,” he bellowed, kicking a thrashing carcass off the end of his blade. It dissolved into the dirt, leaving behind a bubbling mass of green stink. 

“No, closer, closer!” She shouted over the crackling noise. 

It was worse than a royal parade coming through the Sun Gates in Val Royeaux - the roar of the thing. 

“I have to get under it!”

He finally turned around, and she was fucking glowing. Green crawled up her left hand, tendrils of something reaching for the rip in the air. Maker, her hand was wrapped up in a flame so bright he couldn’t look right at it. She was stretching to keep her hold on him, a trickle of blood running from over her right eye down to the corner of her mouth. Wind picked up out of nowhere, dragging leaves and pine needles into a whirling mess around his legs, which he couldn’t make move. The sight of the thing over her head was mesmerizing.

Lady Trevelyan let go of his shoulder with a sob then stumbled back a few paces. The hole was pulling at her. Too late he grabbed for her hand and only managed to slap his shield into her fingertips. 

***

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Hero.”

He kept his eyes on the bit of birch limb he was whittling in the near dark. 

The little man settled across from him at the fire and picked up a cold leg of pheasant. It had been good, just right. Solas wasn’t a half bad cook. 

“She’s not likely to be sore about it.” Varric chewed thoughtfully. “Those rifts are weird shit and nobody told you what to expect. It’s not what most people would want to walk into. But it might be smart to say sorry for that accidental knock on the head.”

Cassandra had turned her over while he was still standing there staring at the snapping light receding into the ground all around him. Tears and thin blood had mixed and run down to her chin. Varric was already wiping back the hair stuck to her face before she crawled a few feet away and was sick in the long grass. The elf had conjured up a ball of ice for the cut above her eye and pressed a vial of something yellow on her, watching as she drank it.

Whatever it was - it was strong. Her head nodded as they rode away. Varric played Twenty Questions to keep her awake, riding close enough to put a hand on her shoulder when she started to list in the saddle. In no time, her answers were slurred, hands limp in her lap. She’d been asleep on her feet when Cassandra called a halt in late afternoon. 

“The elf give her that stuff often?” She might be highborn baggage on this excursion, but she was baggage with a weapon, and not the best shot even with a clear head.

Varric looked surprised, then a little dodgy. “After the rifts, yeah. Solas makes it. It’s to keep the Mark from eating up the rest of her arm.”

“So it’s going to kill her, then?” Didn’t sound fair. From what they’d said around him, she hadn’t been looking for trouble at the Temple. Maybe it wasn’t such a gift.

Varric scratched at his chest in the always-open vee of his tunic. “I dunno.” He sighed, looked at the tent the Herald shared with the Seeker. “It’s pretty likely something will. I know how these things usually go.”

“No place for an Ostie. For a Lady.”

Varric chuckled, picking the pheasant bone in his hand clean. “Cass is a Lady.” 

“A Seeker is a different animal.” She was ferocious, calling out to anything that crossed their path, beating them into submission with single minded determination. She was maybe the best woman with a sword he'd seen. “She can handle herself.”

“Boy, can she. But Princess is doing all right for herself,” Varric chuckled. “She hasn’t got a lot of situational awareness when that thing’s burning a hole through her arm, though. You gotta look out for her. Sometimes literally.” Varric threw the bone into the fire. “Believe me, without that Mark of hers, we’re fucked.”

“You should put a bell on her.”

Varric laughed again and stretched with a yawn. “She’ll get better at it, Hero. Not everybody knows what to do when someone is trying to kill them. It’s a new experience for her. Tomorrow we’ll be in Redcliffe and maybe we can get out of there with our skins intact then head back to Haven.”

“Haven? Is it still standing?”

“Oh, yeah,” Varric got up and turned toward his tent. “It’s standing and it’s just as shitty as ever, but at least nobody comes in to stab us at night, what with the Chantry right there and all. You’ll love it, Hero. Very rustic.”


	3. Haven

“So this Knight Captain, in Kirkwall.”

“She’s stronger than you,” Varric laughed and brushed breadcrumbs from his furry chest.

“Right. Just checking.” 

Cassandra rolled her eyes at Varric and went back to tightening her horse’s saddle. Something about the way she impatiently nudged the hilt of her sword aside to work finally brought up what he’d been trying to remember since the afternoon they fought their way into Redcliffe. 

She reminded him of the first girl he’d fucked who could kill him if she felt like it. Nevarran, too. Used a two hander and _Maker_ , was she ever good with it. She’d been working her way up to the Grand Melee. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember how far she’d gotten in her year.

It had been long enough since his own victory that he’d put one over on his new mates - the rest of the lads in his squad. As far as they knew, Thom Rainier had won the Melee then gone off to seek his fortune, but gotten bored with the adoration of the Free Marches. He was in Orlais to make a name for himself. Going to be the first Marcher to make Colonel. Because Orlais had its shit together, and Thom could respect that sort of an empire.

It sounded better than: 'Won the Melee, lost my tourney armor the second week I had it, drank my way through my winnings by the next winter, damned near starved to death in Ostwick, woke up hung over on a boat to Orlais, wheedled my way into the service with a wager: by beating the stuffing out of the recruitment officers in Val Chevin’s filthiest tavern.'

For three months in the Empress’s Army he’d had his ass handed to him every day, and finally gotten 36 hours of leave once he was bumped up to second class. Sophie, that was her name, had to have been thirty. Andraste’s Tits she was a brute. Hard as a coffin nail. Red hair and green eyes, thighs that could snap your neck. He’d bought her a drink, the only one of the blokes willing to chance talking to her. But he knew, deep down, all she needed was a good dicking, and she’d sweeten up. 

Which Sophie had played along with, right up until the door was shut behind them. She’d kicked his legs out from under him. He’d cracked his head on the bed frame. Still had fucking black spots in his vision while she laughed down at him sprawled in the floor, put a knee on his chest and got his cock out herself.

There were 12 hours to go of his leave when he’d sat down at her table. He spent 10 and a half of them upstairs in her room. Probably five of those hours he was passed out: bruised, chafed, covered in bites and sucked dry. The rest he was either watching her ride him, or on his knees with his head between her legs, her fist in his hair. 

One bony hand around his throat was the only way she’d let him go on top. She had moved him back and forth like that, squeezing when she wanted him to slow down. Slow and hard was how she wanted it, and his honest fear of her made it all the better. 

Thinking about this sort of thing wasn’t going to make sitting a horse pleasant. He realized too late that Varric was talking again, but a shrug and a grunt was good enough for an answer as he got into the saddle. Let him try to pry something out of the Lady for the rest of the morning.

As it happened he needn’t have worried about dodging questions. By midmorning they reached the Crossroads. It was in shambles, and it was plain as day they wouldn’t be riding through with a smile and a nod this time.  
  
***

Tents, everywhere, and a few straggling merchants. Their wagon beds were strewn with wilting radishes and rusty farm tools, a few bales of damp calico. The minute the Lady was off her horse a clump of old women gathered around her, one holding a screaming baby.

They caterwauled and grabbed at her sleeves. The infant was thrust at her, and she took it, a look of horror on her face while she tried to placate them all at the same time.  
Well. Let her get a good long look at a half-starved baby and old women with their cheekbones standing out like ship’s rigging. 

She bounced on the balls of her feet, trying to shush the brat and answer questions at the same time. Cassandra had caught up by now and Lady Trevelyan called out to her.  
“Who is in charge here?!”

Cassandra scowled and looked around, then pointed to a pike with a flag lashed to it, a few hundred yards up the road. “I imagine the Inquisitions forces can still be found there. We can leave the horses to drink while we find the quartermaster. Or perhaps Whittle is still here.”

Lady Trevelyan patted the baby’s swaddled ass and said to the crone who’d handed it to her, “I’m so sorry, madam. We’ll be back, and we’ll be happy to help.”

“Why has Andraste let this happen? Where are my sons? Where is my granddaughter’s Mum?”

“Seeker Cassandra.” There was a whip crack quality to her tone now. “Find Corporal Whittle, tell him I want to see him immediately, and where _he_ can find _me_.”  
Cassandra nodded and climbed back into the saddle, kicking her mare into a trot. 

“Warden Blackwall.”

He didn’t much like the summons but he bit the inside of his cheek and focused on the big smudge of dirt across her chin as she peered up at him, squinting in the sun. 

“Yes, Lady Trevelyan?”

“We passed a farm not far back.” The baby had shut up because she’d put one of her knuckles in its mouth to gum on. “There were goats. We need at least one nanny, two or three would be better.”

“He won’t sell, my lady,” one of the old women piped up, shaking her greasy head. “We tried a week ago, when we still had coin left.”

“But this time a Grey Warden is doing the asking.” Lady Trevelyan gave the baby back and turned around. There was a messy queue of ragged peasants forming and every one of them was staring at her like she was going to burst out in holy light any moment.

“So I’m sure, Lady Trevelyan - are you asking me to _conscript_ goats?”

“Conscript, buy, borrow. You’ll find money in my saddlebags,” she waved a hand over her shoulder, dismissing him.  
  


 

There was more gold in her pack than he’d seen in one place for a long time. She could buy the damned farm, never mind goats. 

The two he came back with complained about being trussed up behind his saddle, and the days-old kid had soaked the sack it was tucked into with piss by the time he took it off the pommel back at the Crossroads.

He’d expected to find her still holding court by the cistern, but she wasn’t to be found. 

Corporal Whittle was there instead. The skinny lad was nodding and pointing and generally Looking Busy. So he’d had an earful, then. With the animals parceled out, he stretched his legs by walking his mount to the makeshift stables and finding a flake of hay for it to nibble.

“Blackwall!”

The Lady crooked a finger at him then ducked into a little workshop tacked onto the stable. The moment he was through the door she shoved a piece of brown bread at him.

“Is there something wrong with this bread?”

A grainy mouthful confirmed what he already knew from the smell. “Tree flour, my lady.”

“Tree flour? That’s a pretty way to say it.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes with a shaky hand. “I’ve never heard of anything so idiotic. Sawdust in bread. They’ll poison someone!”

“It’s not tasty but it’s not poison, either." He tossed the rest to a hound that had followed them in. "You’ve got soldiers out here playing house and your supply lines are dodgy. They aren’t trained to coddle refugees.”

She stared at him a second or two, like she wasn’t sure how to say what she wanted without shouting. The Herald had been crying, that much was obvious. Her eyes were raw and there was a bloody spot on her lower lip where she’d been biting at it.

“There’s twenty percent more mouths out there than grain - the extra had to come from somewhere. It’s _maths_ , not malice, Lady Trevelyan.”

“Andraste’s arse.” She sat on an overturned barrel and scratched the dog’s ears. “If we can’t at least feed people what reason do they have to be here?”

“Nowhere else to go. Your Inquisition is the best thing around.”

“It’s Cassandra’s. I am… a hostage turned pet.” She waved her left hand around until even the dusty rafters six inches from his head were lit up green. “A pet with one useful trick.”

Her perfect posture left her and she rested her elbows on her knees, rubbing her temples with a sigh. “Thank you, Warden, for your advice. And for the shopping trip. I imagine everyone near their tent will sleep better tonight.”

“Not much for babies?”

“No one likes the sound of a crying infant,” she snapped, and the Mark on her hand flared in response to her temper. It made his hair stand on end.

Not the motherly sort, then. She couldn’t give that baby away fast enough earlier. But noblewomen didn’t have any tolerance for wet nappies or the other nasty parts of life. Easier to pay somebody else a few coppers a day to wipe noses and spoon porridge into their inbred sprogs.

“If that’s all, Lady Trevelyan, thought I’d help with the hunting before nightfall.” 

“Wait. I meant to ask you: in Redcliffe, in the Chantry, you said you’d not put anything past mages.” She sat up straight and pulled a vial out of her jacket. She swallowed half the contents with a grimace, opening and closing her fist a few times until the green light dimmed.

He followed her out of the shed, flinching a bit at the way everyone nearby turned their heads as soon as she was in view. 

“Those people there, they fled their circles, but they had nothing to do with the mess in the Chantry. That was the Magister, Alexius. Almost certainly.”

“Or the other one who sent the note. He knew an awful lot about those rifts. Leave it to a Tevinter to start a fight with demons inside a Chantry.” 

Lady Trevelyan nodded and stared out at the smoke hanging low over the tents. 

_Time Magic._

The green stick figures in the Chantry had moved faster or slower depending on how close they were to the tear in dusty air between pockmarked columns and splintered pews.    
If she could could control the rifts, what was to say Lady Trevelyan couldn’t open a hole in the air and walk back a year ago, five, ten years ago? That was dangerous thinking, for him, for any man with the weight of the dead on his back. But it wouldn’t leave him as he walked away, and while he set snares for nugs. The thought of what he could do with as little as five years reprieve kept him awake that night.

 

***

By the looks of things he wasn’t the only one who had missed sleep. The Herald wandered aimlessly while he rest of them struck camp. She was chewing a short piece of lime twig, rather than cleaning her teeth the way the rest of them did - by holding a long one and working the frayed end around. When she noticed him looking, she turned her head away and extracted it with her fingertips then dropped it into the grass. A month on the road with a ragtag army hadn’t knocked all the prissiness out of her.

Cold had settled around them overnight, rolling down between narrow passes in the foothills. He stretched, dropping his pack a moment to work the kinks out of his shoulders. Crisp air in his lungs with sun warming his armor was a pleasant enough way to pass a morning. Lady Trevelyan shivered and pulled her long linen scarf closer around her neck and shoulders.

“That’s going to be tangled up if you need to shoot.” Not that she was much help to begin with, but he’d rather not have an arrow in the back of his neck if he could avoid one.

“Nothing loose around your shoulders or your hips.”

“I know, but I’m freezing,” she said through chattering teeth. She leaned into her mare’s shoulder, breath clouding.

“Tie it round your kidneys instead. You’ll be warmer.”

When she stared at him like he was mad he hung his pack on his own mount’s saddle and pointed to his waist. “Big belt, yeah? The Seeker’s got on two plus five yards of something tied under them. Varric’s not wearing that scarf round his waist to keep his shirt together.”

She laughed and unwound it from her neck and shoulders. It was caught in the buttons on her short jacket, buttons that had no hope of closing over her chest. “What about Solas?”

“Barefoot elves do as they like.” He watched her fumble and get the fabric wet in the long grass as she wrapped it several times over her waist and hips. She tied the knot too high, but he nodded at her questioning look. “Should do.”

Varric came around the rocks they’d camped behind, crossbow in his arms. “Hey, Princess. You look like a proper troublemaker now. Josie won’t recognize you tonight. Every time we go back up the mountain you’re more disreputable.”

“Thank you, Varric. I take it as a compliment.” She went pink and started braiding her hair. 

The little man winked at him as he passed. It hadn’t escaped Varric’s notice that he’d suggested doing the _one_ thing that could bring more attention to Lady Trevelyan’s tits.

 

***  
  
“Some asshole’s in a big hurry,” Varric grumbled at him, without his asking.

The fading light threw long shadows as he turned his face from splatters of mud. A weighted carriage barreled toward them, outriders alert, scowling at their group waiting off to the side while they passed at a gallop. 

He counted six big lads on matched All Breds and two more hanging on to the back of the carriage as it tore through the frozen muck. Even the driver was armed to the teeth.

“I know those horses,” the Herald said, her eyes gone wide and wondering. She jerked the head of her own plodding Fereldan mount around, ready to bolt after them. 

Leaning out to snag the animal’s cheekpiece brought her up short. “Hold,” he said, more for the horse than her.  
  
The mare stamped in confusion every bit as great as hers. Brows drawn in annoyance, she turned on him with a frustrated glance back at the carriage tearing down the road.  
  
At least Varric knew what he was about. “Warden’s right, Princess, you don’t go chasing off after big guys with pointy sticks. Makes ‘em nervous. And they looked pretty serious.”  
  
“But they’re _ours_.” With a huff, she slithered out of the saddle and stepped into the thoroughfare. He could hear her quiet grunt of discomfort as she loosed two charmed arrows. Rolling her shoulder uneasily, she waited. Both bolts burst into crackling yellow flame, whistling as they arced over the heads of the riders behind the carriage.  
  
“Nice job on those signal arrows, Chuckles.” Varric said. “Loud!”  
  
The elf only shrugged, his bald head pink with cold. They all waited, watching the carriage slow and finally come to a halt down hill. A door burst open and a man stepped down, took a horse from one of the armed men and headed their way at a trot with two more riders with lances flanking his approach.  
  
At the sight of that, the Lady shrugged out of her quiver and hung her bow over the pommel of her horse’s saddle. He couldn’t see her face under the brim of her hat, but she was shucking her gloves and slapping dried mud from the legs of her trousers as she waited, walking slowly down the road as if she couldn’t be still.  
  
“It’s either husband or Daddy,” Varric muttered to him. “What do you think?”  
  
She’d said nothing of either, not that he’d paid attention to, anyway. What little Lady Trevelyan revealed of her family amounted to something about an awful lot of brothers. “I’ve found a grown woman who still calls her father Daddy is nothing but trouble.”  
  
The Seeker couldn’t let her get more than ten yards away unarmed - Cassandra hopped to the ground to follow. She kept her hands away from her weapons, but it was obviously an effort for her as the three riders slowed their horses to a walk and finally stopped.  
  
Father, it had to be the father. This was who she had to blame for that nose of hers.  
  
He was seventy if he was a day, though he was still a competent rider. Not a blade in sight, but he didn’t need them with those hulking bookends riding along with him. He dismounted nimbly enough, eyes for nothing but the Lady and he slipped a bit on a patch of mucky snow.  
  
The first thing he did was take her hat off, while she stood stock still, letting him look her over. The hat he held to the side, and instantly one of his guards had it in hand. That was how you knew a man was accustomed to power: the assurance that a servant was waiting, without bothering to look.  Bann Trevelyan was long and lean with a shorter version of his daughter’s unruly bronze hair: the wind pulled it this way and that until he slicked a hand over it.  
  
“Evie!” He crushed her to his slender chest, pulling her up onto her toes. “Maker have mercy, Evie. You’re here.”  
  
“Papa.” The Herald’s voice was muffled by the thick ermine lining of the velvet coat she was mashed into. “I’m filthy,” she protested weakly before going boneless, a hitching little sob squeezed out of her.  
  
The old man’s face went red but he steeled himself, clearing his throat a few times before putting her at arm’s length and pulling out a handkerchief.  
  
“Now then, none of that,” he said kindly, which sent her into fresh sobs. As she wiped her face, he gave her a sharp-eyed assessment. 

“You’re thin. Haven’t they been feeding you?” Before she could answer, he’d taken hold of her left hand. “Evie, Evie, my girl, what have you gotten into?” At her pained wince, he let go, but stared at the green slash through her palm until she dropped it to her side and turned around with a sniffle.  
  
“The Right Hand has been taking very good care of me.”  
  
Cassandra stepped into the introduction with a nod of her head. “Bann Trevelyan.”  
  
“Honored to make your acquaintance, Lady Pentaghast.” His eyes drifted over the rest of them with a distant interest.

The Herald made introductions from one end to the other. Solas first - a nice touch and the kind of thing he was learning to expect out of her. Bann Trevelyan didn’t flinch from shaking hands with an Elven apostate, so maybe he was where she’d gotten her decent manners - in spite of an Ostwick upbringing.  
  
The carriage was turned around and pulled alongside by the time he had his own firm greeting. The Bann had a strong hand but it was soft as nugskin, the knuckles prominent.  
  
A muffled hiccup got his attention, and the Bann turned to see what he was looking at.  
  
Lady Trevelyan had climbed up onto the running board, and though they couldn’t catch her words, the tone of her voice was tearful as she patted the hand of the man at the reins, who blew his nose loudly.  
  
“Evelyn’s maid, with her in the temple,” Lord Trevelyan said quietly, turning his back to the carriage. “She was my driver’s wife.” He sighed and shook his head, pulling his fur collar up around his ears in the cold wind. “Is it true then, you’ve not found anyone else alive?”  
  
“My Lord, I am not the best one to ask. Seeker Cassandra could advise you.”  
  
“Indeed, Bann Trevelyan.” Cassandra nodded her head back up the road. “Haven is only five miles off.”  
  
“Oh, I know. We were there. The Templar in command told me you were still a day out. Thus our hurry, though I’m pleased he was wrong.” With a decisive nod, he climbed back inside his carriage. “Come along, then, Evie. The sooner we’re back in Haven the sooner my healer can look at you.”  
  
Before the elf could speak, Lady Trevelyan had shot a look Solas’ way. “Papa, about that-”  
  
“It would be inadvisable to attempt to remove the Mark, Evelyn.” Solas frowned at her.  
  
She nodded, fetching her bow and quiver, making a little placating motion toward Solas.  
  
“Leave that,” the Bann stuck his head out the carriage door.  
  
She shouldered the arrows anyway, taking her father’s hand and stepping up into the carriage. “You never know lately, Papa.”  
  
Varric laughed at that as they rumbled away. “Daddy’s going to get an earful, I’ll bet.”  
  
The forward camp wasn’t much. He was glad to see guards out front, at least this Inquisition had given some thought to security. There were a lot of grubby, flea-bitten wretches by the gates, clamoring for justice for the Divine, whatever that meant.  
  
“Chase them off and you’re an asshole, let them clump up and they make everybody nervous.” Varric offered as they passed. “The Left Hand can’t win either way.”  
  
“What’s this they’re after?”  
  
Varric shrugged.

“At first they called for the survivor’s death,” Solas put in. “Once the tale of her salvation spread, they want only to blame her survival and the Divine’s death on either mages or Templars, whichever is most convenient.”  
  
“Sounds about right.” Their arrival broke up a knot of farm boys who had paired off and were fumbling around with practice shields and wooden swords. They all gawked at him, at the Griffon on his chest. It took all his will not to fidget or tug at the straps over his shoulders that would never quite fit properly. 

“Welcome home, Hero.” Varric pointed with a wink. “The tavern’s that way, once you’ve dropped your bags.”  
  
  
  



	4. Morning in Haven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The temptation to jump into her father's carriage and make a break for it is strong, especially in the morning. Herald and Hostage are one and the same for Evelyn.

Seven. Eight, Nine, Ten. Two more made twelve.

Twelve round patched spots on the ceiling of her little cabin. Or roof. _If the ceiling is just the underside of the roof, which did you call it?_

Evelyn tucked her hands under her chin, remembering the Mark at the last second. But it was quiet, not even itching. A good morning. Her plain lawn nightdress had twisted around her waist while she slept so that the knotted threads in the bottommost quilt poked at her bare legs.  As long as no one came to the door she could stay warm and quiet.

Maybe things had changed overnight. Maybe she had slept for a week, a month - however long it would take for Evelyn Trevelyan to no longer be anyone worth waking up at dawn.

Outside Haven was moving already, though pink light barely touched the ceiling. Men’s voices passed her curtained window with the crunch of gravel and creaking leather armor - guards trading places at the inner gate. She had come to think of the thick timbers less as a way to keep monsters _out_ and more as something to keep The Herald _in._

Evelyn knew this wasn’t the truth, but it seemed more likely when she was sleepy and still shivering even in bed. Evelyn _hoped_ it wasn't the truth. She turned onto her stomach and pulled the pillow over her head.

“My lady? My lady?”

Hesitant taps at the window startled her awake again. Evelyn swung her feet to the threadbare rug and snatched up her boots, stamping them into place before she hurried to unbar her door.

Lorienne came in and started stoking the fire, motioning for Evelyn to get back under the quilts. Her long ears were hidden today by the neat white cap she wore over her hair, glossy black and straight as a stick. It hung in two braids nearly touching the ties of her apron.

“Don’t bother with the fire,” Evelyn said around chattering teeth. “I’ll go to the Chantry straight away.”

Lorienne's chapped hands twisted in her skirt. “Sister Leliana won’t like to hear I’ve not done my duty.”

“She won’t hear any such thing from me.” There was no way of knowing exactly what Lorienne, or for that matter _any_ of the girls in Haven, had been instructed to do with their time. The servants she saw in Haven were cleverer than any Evelyn had known. Along with Lorienne, there was a broad shouldered Denerim lass named Jenny who was always underfoot, and Evelyn was certain she had a sister just as intimidating in service to the Nightingale too. _Is my bed made by spies or more guards or a mixture of the two?_

The very idea that she used the word "spies" - even in her own thoughts - was still maddening. _Real people don't rub elbows with spies. What in Andraste's name am I doing?_

Evelyn moved her pack aside - full up and ready for the ride back to Redcliffe tomorrow - then flipped open her scorched and battered trunk. Of the four dresses which had survived the Temple along with her, the blue was warmest. She stepped into it, careful not to snag it on the buckles hanging open along either side of her boots.

Lorienne held the heavy wool while Evelyn wriggled out of her nightdress then pulled her underthings over her head and shoved her arms down the sleeves of her dress. Icy silver grommets pressed against the small of her back as Lorienne tightened the lacing first on the bottom layers, then the dress itself.

“There’s not so much slack in the laces since you’ve come back, my lady.” The elf made a little noise of frustration as she tied a quick knot.

“Good.” Evelyn brushed loose hairs from her skirt. “I’ve been eating like a wharf rat.”

Always hungry, and always nauseated. Initially Evelyn had blamed the thing on her hand, but soon enough it was clear there were other factors. Could be the Mark used up her strength at a faster pace, but it was just as likely to be walking all day when the ground was too rocky or steep and muddy for them to trust the horses. The Mark might be making her ill, but it was also the near-constant odor of death and shallow latrines everywhere Cassandra took her.

Evelyn dragged a brush through her hair and sat by the fire Lorienne had conjured while she braided it. Her toes ached with cold seeping up through the floorboards and into her boots. At least the cold in Haven kept the smells down. She laced her boots, foot propped on her trunk to do the buckles as Lorienne opened the curtains and made her bed.

Blowing on her fingers did nothing. Evelyn wrapped up in a thick shawl - none of the filmy lace she wore at home would do in Ferelden - then the fur lined cloak her father had brought along. Morning in Haven was nothing but forcing herself to plunge from one frigid space to the next. She gritted her teeth and jerked the door open, nearly running headlong into one of her father’s men.

“Vaan! You startled me.”

His cheeks were red with cold and she could see just what shaving had cost him in the nicks and dried cuts standing out dark on his jaw and neck. No wonder men in the Frostbacks all grew beards.

“The Inquisition Ambassador left this for you, my lady.”

Which meant Vaan had been standing at her door scowling like a ginger gargoyle since before dawn. Her father’s work, certainly. Why now? They were all leaving by noon.

Vaan offered a linen bundle with something small and heavy at the bottom.

“Thank you.” Evelyn pulled out a squat bottle of potion. It was purple with swirls of silver ghoul’s beard essence. It could only be contraceptive. She shoved it back in the bag and felt her face go hot. “Thank you! I’ll- ah, yes. I’ll just leave this inside.”

Vaan ducked his head and turned his back to the door again. A few of Leliana’s scouts walked past, looking on with obvious interest as she shut the door. Evelyn swallowed the last of a cup of water by her bed then measured as best she could two fingers of the thick potion into the cup.

It was sickly sweet, the taste unforgettable. Contraceptive would always taste like hope, and like lying and anticipation in equal measure.

She had been on The Potion before of course, but it wasn’t something she needed to think about often. Not enough to tolerate the headaches and nausea it gave her. It had been easier for the past two years to hope for the best and take reasonable precautions on the rare night she took one of Ostwick’s lords up on his hints. The cork squeaked as she sealed the bottle before putting it in her trunk where sunlight couldn’t render it useless. Licking a drip from her thumb, she waited for the usual dizziness to pass.

Better safe than sorry. It was sweet of Josephine to think of it. Sweet, or she didn’t have much regard for Marcher morals. Maybe not for Evelyn’s specifically.

Few things were farther from Evelyn’s mind than sex but things happened. Things happened when you weren’t looking for them, when you didn’t want them. She pushed stray hairs from her eyes and smoothed the front of her dress again. Thinking of this kind of thing would keep her from even _pretending_ to behave normally so she reminded herself Fereldan soldiers didn’t seem any more or less feral and predatory than any other kind of fighting men. She went back outside, still a little wobbly from the potion.

The Right Hand was over her shoulder any time Evelyn left Haven. Jailor turned bodyguard. If a Seeker holding a sword wasn’t enough to ward off men with nasty intentions, nothing would be. Besides, she was too busy waiting for her hand to fester and poison her to be fretting over unwanted attention from Dog Lords.

“I’m envious, Vaan.” Evelyn smiled and led the way to the Chantry, Vaan a half step behind.

“Yes, My Lady?”

“Not of the crossing, not this late in the year, but you’ll be going home.”

“Home?” Vaan said. “Has my lady decided to leave today as well?”

“No, I meant you’ll be off with my father this morning.” A knot of soldiers made way for her with a few muttered greetings. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and nodded, not making eye contact with any of them. Pellets of ice from the peak of a tent blew across the path, stinging her cheek. “Another week and the sea will be dreadful by the time you reach the Coast.”

“If my lady is staying, then I am staying. Clark, too. The Bann told us last night, begging my lady’s pardon.”

“Did he?” Evelyn forced another smile as Vaan shouldered the heavy Chantry door open for her. Warm air billowed out, thick with incense and the green smell of fresh reeds scattered on the floor. Stamping her boots free of snow, Evelyn blinked until her eyes adjusted to the dim light. She cut through a group of Sisters carrying out baskets of bandages and still-steaming bread.

Vaan knew enough to recognize when he had been dismissed by her quick pace. He took up a post in the far alcove. She caught Josephine’s eye over the Antivan’s ever-present To Do list.

“Good morning, Lady Trevelyan.”

“Good morning. Yes, I know.” Evelyn noted the way the younger woman’s eyes went to Vaan’s hulking presence near the doors. “I have a new shadow.”

“Bann Trevelyan was kind enough to brief me on the new arrangements.”

“There are no new arrangements,” Evelyn rubbed at her aching palm with her thumb. “My father misspoke. I won’t be needing any additional _help_.”

“Oh! I must have been mistaken.” Josephine smiled and jotted something down, nodding at a serving girl who hurried out of Josephine’s office with an armful of books. “It is good news. The presence of your family’s guards, while we of course welcome any and all assistance House Trevelyan is generous enough to provide - having guards at your quarters might give the wrong impression. That your family has found…fault with the Inquisition’s own arrangements for your comfort.” She looked up from beneath thick lashes. “Is there anything lacking, Evelyn? Beyond the obvious, of course, things a small place such as Haven cannot hope to provide as you are accustomed to.”

“Not at all. I’ve felt quite safe.”

If Josephine saw it for the half-truth it was she was good enough not to mention as much.

“As safe as I can hope, with the Breach overhead.” Evelyn wiggled her fingers until the pins and needles sensation died down. At least it wasn’t glowing yet.

“Wonderful. I am gratified to hear it.”

The runners Evelyn had been ignoring were starting to fidget at the edge of her vision.

“Before I see my father off I wanted to thank you for the package this morning.”

“Oh!” Josephine scribbled something, very fast, as she answered. “You must forgive me for not thinking of it sooner. It was only-” Here the Ambassador glanced up at Evelyn and lowered her voice. “When I took my own dose, late last night, I happened to think, you perhaps had not been of a mind to find any. That is, if you aren’t already taking something? I confess I never thought to ask. Forgive me.”

“No, you were very kind to think of it.”

Evelyn waited for her to look up again, hoping to see something that would tell her just how much more she or Leliana had dug up about Evelyn’s life. Josephine was too well bred to ever mention anything Evelyn didn’t offer first. It wasn’t as if she would say, _How have you enjoyed your time as our hostage? Does it compare favorably to life as a widow in the Marches? Is there anything in particular you would like me to say when someone asks after your health or that of your bastard?_

On second thought, everyone on the side of this shoddy mountain had more important things to worry over than a Bann’s daughter embarrassing her family. Evelyn twisted a loose strand of hair tickling her ear. Josephine’s own hair was immaculate, as always. How in the Maker’s name did she survive on so little sleep without looking like something the cat dragged in?

“I won’t take any more of your time, Ambassador.”

“Always a pleasure, Lady Trevelyan.” Josephine turned her parchment over, quill already hovering above the blank side. “I believe the kitchen has arranged for your breakfast in Bann Trevelyan’s rooms. The stables are aware he intends to leave before midmorning, everything will be ready at your leisure.”

Vaan followed her down the steep stairway into the modest room set aside for the Divine’s use in Haven. There was still a scholarly feeling to it. Impersonal but not unwelcoming. Her father didn’t look odd sitting at a small table before a plate of eggs. It was rather like a room in a good inn - an inn which happened to keep _many_ books about the Chantry.

Beside the plate meant for her was a stout brick of a book. As Evelyn poured herself tea, her father noticed her looking.

“Treaties.” He took a bite of toast, careful not to leave crumbs down the front of his coat. “Explanations of treaties with Orlais, to be exact. Signatories to which houses, how and when the contracts were signed. You may need them.”

Evelyn chewed while she thought. Papa always saved bad news for mealtime at home. It gave her something to do and she was less likely to burst into tears at the table with servants tending the sideboard at her back. Arto Trevelyan had never done well with crying women.

“Papa, we - the family - aren’t here. I thought we agreed as far as anyone needs to know I am convalescing in the fresh mountain air.”

He shook his head at her, his carefully combed hair catching the light of the hearth. “These people are in a war, my girl. A small, dirty little war, but there we are.” He stirred his tea with a grimace. “Of all my children I never thought it would be you,” he sighed. “Before I go you must know what our rights are. Even here in the Dog Lords’ mountains.”

“Rights? Papa, this isn’t-”

“House Trevelyan may claim any lands or monies it takes while engaged in battle with a force aligned against the sovereign crown.” Her father’s wild eyebrows crowded over his long nose. “Orlais. Which means Celene, at the moment, and Maker willing for a great deal longer.”

“Taking spoils is a stretch, Papa.” Evelyn studied a diagram of the order of ascension from Emperor blahblah’s era while he went on at length about the importance of asserting the family’s power. She turned a page. _Isn’t it enough I’ve rifled the pockets of dead men? It’s easy for you to prate on about fortitude when I’ll be doing the dirty work._

Bann Trevelyan had sent her off to a bloody Conclave with less specific instructions. A Conclave which was supposedly meant to ‘Negotiate peace for the Marches and all of Thedas in turn’. Which, yes, she had seen was nugshit by the end of the first day. But his advice at the time had amounted to: ‘Don’t drink wine in roadside inns, follow the lead of the other Banns’ representatives and please try not to cause an incident’.

“This feels like robbery,” she sighed when he finally stopped quoting precedents.

“But,” her father shrugged and patted at his pockets absently. “Say it with a straight face and a stern eye and you may get away with it. You will need gold out here, Evie. Rather a lot of it.”

“I’m not certain I have a stern eye.”

“Certainly you do.” He stuffed an apple into a pocket with a smile. “Pretend you are talking to Siggy. Dog Lords and three year olds are on nearly the same level.”

She laughed, or at least she made a noise that might have been a terrible attempt at laughing. She thought about Siggy running behind her, struggling through the lush plantings at the edge of the garden last summer.

“Wait, Mummy, Mummy wait _wait_!”

She had turned back, but it had taken a moment to realize just what she was hearing. She hadn’t known Siggy knew the word yet. He had been frowning his baby scowl and concentrating on keeping his balance and speaking at the same time. His chubby arms were spread wide in front of him, fingers already grabbing at the air before he was close enough that she could bend and scoop him up. She had been heartbroken at the tears on his cheeks, Siggy had thought she was ignoring him.

“Mummy is only going to the neighbor’s, my grubby little grub. Mummy will be back in a blink.”

She had said the same thing into his glossy black curls a year later. Just as her ship threw its moorings, the harbor pilot waving impatiently at her to board. _Back in a blink, grubby grub._ Nearly three months now away.

 _What am I doing playing with Siggy’s little heart like this? I’ll make an orphan of him._ Either the thing clinging to her left hand would kill her, or someone would finally take it upon themselves to avenge the Divine.

“Siggy, speaking of, will be delighted with all this loot.” Her father made a show of inspecting the wooden sword and tiny shield she had packed for her son. “Your mother won’t much like these. She will be fearing for her crystal and the cats’ tails.”

“He should play outside before autumn passes,” Evelyn heard herself say. “Nanny will bundle him up so tightly his arms won’t bend, once the ice starts.”

“Nanny has never lacked for caution,” her father agreed. “But she’s been a fine part of the family all these years. Don’t know what your mother would have done without her. The six of you were a hero’s challenge.”

Evelyn folded her napkin deliberately, thinking of the women she saw in Ferelden. Nothing like Mother. The ones who cuddled their babies - kissing the boys on their cheeks and plaiting the girls’ hair with care. Who shrieked when one of their children misbehaved, who weren’t too busy to swat their backsides and tell them what they had done wrong.

She cleared her throat and blinked away another barrage of tears. It was hardly a normal day in Haven if she wasn’t weeping every few hours and damn Papa for saying her boy’s name. The only way to manage was to push away the thought of him until she could be alone at night with her fear for him. For herself.

“Don’t fret, my girl. Siggy is having a grand time. He has run of the manor. Captain of the Guard and bearer of Keys to the City. He has helped me navigate a few crises, though I overruled his recommendation of putting Oma in the stocks for refusing him a third raisin bun.”

“Mother said no? To her grandson?”

“Yes, I believe there was some mention of stomach upset,” her father shrugged and weighed a few coins in his hand, then slipped them back into his pocket. “I was as surprised as anyone. Your brother won three royals off of me for it. He was betting on Siggy eating until his shirt split at the seams.”

Maker. Evelyn sniffed once, hard, then shook her head and stood. Charles was the last man she wanted anywhere near Siggy. He would do well to carry on without a father figure rather than her pig of a brother. Nothing to be done about it now. Better to keep her mind on less upsetting topics. Like civil war.

“Speaking of gold, Papa? I was rather hoping you would pass the hat once you get home.” Evelyn poured the last of the strong black tea for herself.

“A tricky business.” He replaced his cup on its saucer with a click. “How am I to approach the Guerrins or the Heveres - not even a full season from their sons’ funerals and say, ‘Sorry about that but lucky fellow that I am, my girl has come through in one piece. Oh yes, could I trouble you for a few thousand Royals?’”

“You can’t wait until a rift opens up in the flower market or the Plantage to take steps, Papa.”

“But that is exactly what it will take, my dear. Until they have seen it with their own eyes, until it is their child caught in the-”

Evelyn blinked too fast, looked away too slowly from the familiar seams in her father’s cheeks.

“Oh, my girl.” He came around the table and pulled her into his arms.

Evelyn leaned against him, her throat tight. Her sniffling was impossible to hide.

“Now, now, no more of that.” Arto Trevelyan had been the very picture of an indulgent Ostwick father until she was 14, when suddenly he no longer knew how to talk to her. He had little more than hugs and tutting for her once her eyes were wet.

“But I missed my usual round of sniveling this morning. I was in a hurry.” Evelyn wrapped both arms tightly around her father’s waist and clung to him like a burr, breathing in his familiar scent of cedar and vandal aria.

“Evie, hush. Siggy is happy as a clam. A spoilt clam in short pants.”

She didn’t believe for one moment Siggy was happily playing stickhorse in the garden. He is a clever boy, and knew already when he was being lied to. Nanny had become a terrible gossip in her old age, and surely someone had said _something_ within Siggy’s hearing about his mother. About the thousand dead. About the Divine and demons.

“No one ever wants to part with gold until it is very nearly too late.” Her father changed the subject then let her go with a little squeeze.

“If you want treaties used, Commander Rutherford would be a better one to speak with.”

“I have. Yes, he’ll most likely be the one doing the talking, but on the off chance you are out while the worst of it goes on, learn the terms, my girl.”

The off chance. She tried not to flinch at the memory of fire: greasy smoke twisting up from a line of corpses stacked like cord wood. Obviously templars, laying under the sun for days and days, leaking out of their obsidian Chantry armor. Solas had frowned in concentration as everything charred under his spell, the bodies too far gone even for searching first. Old bodies at least stunk less after they were lit. But freshly dead burned slowly and they crackled like…well, like roasting meat. They smelled like roasting meat.

All of a sudden she was afraid her breakfast was coming back up. Evelyn stepped away farther from the table, wiping her cheeks. She took a few deep breaths but there was too much incense in the air even down here.

“Come along then, Evie.” Arto patted his coat pockets one last time, grumbling. “How do these Fereldans run a town without a crier? One never knows the time.”

“You’re ready, then?” Evelyn dabbed at her cheeks well aware that he was watching her critically.

“Come along,” he opened the door for Clark to fetch the luggage. “We will stop at your quarters then walk down to the first bridge.”

“Walk? Where is the carriage?”

“Driver can follow along after. You will look lovely and we shall smile and take our time taking our leave.”

“Ah.” Evelyn  nodded, resigned. “I was rather enjoying not playing pantomime.”

“Playing?” Her father scoffed, throwing his heavy fur lined topcoat over his arm as Clark and Vaan took his trunks, one stacked on the other. “Evelyn, this is life. The pantomime comes with playing as though you are _not_ Lady Trevelyan. You may do so while you are out in the wilds with the Right Hand. Today the Herald of Andraste and Bann Trevelyan are having a leisurely walk down to be seen off.”

“Brr.” He shrugged his collar up higher once they were outside the Chantry. “It is a hard cold here in the mountains, isn’t it?”

Evelyn missed the foggy winter in Ostwick. It was a kindly sort of damp chill most days. Even in the darkest months the canals froze along their edges but the roofs were rarely covered in snow. She curled her hand into the crook of Papa’s elbow and nodded.

“It occurs to me if demons do appear along the seawall, you shall have all the more reason to come home sooner.”

“I don’t need another reason.”

“I know, my girl, I know.” He squeezed her hand where it was tucked into his arm. “Have Miss Montilyet explain the details of those treaties. That young lady knows as much of them as I do.”

Evelyn nodded, her throat tight again. Her father stopped in front of the square cabin that had been given over for her use. Evelyn frowned, a hand held up to block the glare of sun on snow.

“Run in and freshen up, my girl. We’ve a long walk.”

“Papa,” she sighed. “Have you seen the first thing to make you think anyone here gives two coppers about my hair?”

Arto’s old trick of simply pretending anything he didn’t want to hear had not in fact been said wasn’t as funny as it had been when she was an eleven year old. Evelyn had delighted in her Mother’s consternation then. It took a lot of effort not to flounce up the steep incline to her door, but she managed to enter her cabin like an adult and make herself up with what little she had cobbled together for vanity. Kohl for her eyes, balm for her lips and cheeks, though they hardly needed more color - the cold dry air kept her flushed red near constantly. She took her hair down and did a better job of braiding and winding it up prettily to frame her face.

His indulgent smile when she came back looking the part had her poking at his side. Pantomime it might be, but the Trevelyans did it well, it had to be said.

“Ah, there is my lovely Evie. All turned out.”

“Yes, Papa," she took his arm again. "Let’s go.”

Vaan, Clark and a few others straggled behind as they cleared the creaking gate. There were guards and soldiers, kitchen girls on their way to fetch yesterday’s baskets and bowls from Cullen’s men in the forward camp.

“The Chancellor and I are in agreement on one thing,” her father intoned, nodding at a line of hunched figures sitting along the frozen lakeside. “Too many idle young men here.”

Evelyn nodded, but said nothing, wishing she had pinned her hood a bit farther forward. The wind was bitterly cold off the water.

“Press gangs, that is what’s needed. There must be half a galley’s worth of them down by that lake, just looking for trouble.”

“Papa, I’m sure the Inquisition can find something useful for everyone here.” Evelyn nodded at Cullen just in front of the gate.

“One would think these people have never heard of Impressment.”

Cullen answered her father’s wave with a nod of his head and a sheepish half smile for Evelyn when they passed him. He was watching young men shove one another around with practice swords.

“In the meantime there they are, making a nuisance of themselves, pestering the women. Shameful. Shiftless men find themselves chained to an oar by sundown, in _my_ city.”

“Cassandra isn’t quite up to conscription,” she suggested. There was little point in trying to explain once again that it was Cassandra and Leliana who made those sort of decisions. Her father was set in his ways, like so many old men.

“So.” He humphed loudly. “They are waiting for promise of a wage packet at the end of the week.”

“Begging your pardon, my lord, but Clark and I could do something about this problem.” Vaan sounded like he was itching for a fight.

“Not in the next hour, Papa. Even Vaan isn’t that good.” Evelyn tried for a light tone, glancing back to see Vaan scowling down toward the lake.

“Next hour, no, but next few days, my lord, with a few of these ex Templars,” Vaan said, nudging Clark with an elbow. “Seven or eight of us can have this place cleaned up in an afternoon.”

“Papa, you need Vaan and Clark with you on the trip home.” In the weeks since the disaster Evelyn had managed to avoid mob justice but keeping Ostwick guards would only reignite suspicion that she had something to hide. “You’ll need them at the Manor.”

“Don’t be silly, Evie. There is nothing like having the family’s people around you.” Her father gave his guards an indulgent smile over his shoulder and patted her hand.

“Which is why I will rest easier knowing they’re with you. The roads aren’t safe, and you’ll have to be quick. Another week and the Sea will be horrid.” Evelyn kept her eyes on the muddy ground in front of them. “It would make me feel better, knowing you have all of them at home, and Siggy thinks Clark hangs the moon.”

He sighed, his hand over hers patting absently in time with their steps.

“They have an _army_ here, Papa, but you’ll need to be careful, what if-”

“Evelyn Trevelyan,” her father’s voice went stern. “I have seen this family through  the Blight, a peasant famine, a Hundred Year Storm - _two_ Hundred Year Storms as a matter of fact. Getting home again is not a challenge.”

“I’m sorry, Papa,” she squeezed his arm in apology. “I think I may be getting a bit stroppy. There is no end of protection for me here, and only so many people we can trust back home.”

“I don’t like you out in the wilds with strangers. I’ve had a chat with the Templar, Rutherford.”

Bann Trevelyan’s idea of ‘having a chat’ could mean anything from pouring liquor into someone until they agreed to his terms or a series of softly spoken threats and all points in between. She made an indifferent noise.

“Evie, you need looking after. It was important he knows just what I expect of him.”

“Papa,” Evelyn sighed, pressing her forehead into his shoulder for a moment. The fact that he had less authority the farther he was from the Marches was another thing Bann Trevelyan refused to hear. This explained Cullen’s horrendous attempt at smalltalk night before last. “It isn’t the Commander’s job to be my bodyguard. Cassandra has that well in hand, I promise.”

“Obviously. He is far too important in this little…headquarters they carved out for themselves.”

Evelyn squinted at her father. “And?”

“I had the Warden Constable called up as well.”

“Papa! You didn't!”

“Now, Evie, don’t be silly. Take that fellow along. Who better to stop demons? Maker only knows what sent him to the Wardens. He didn't say and frankly it doesn’t much matter.” He shook his head sadly. “Terrible business, Grey Wardens. Though I did make certain it wasn’t something unseemly.”

Evelyn closed her eyes for a few steps, speechless with embarrassment. Her palms itched with it. The thought of the Warden pacing like a caged fennec while Arto tried to gladhand him into playing bodyguard was mortifying. He hardly needed _another_ reason to scowl at her across a campfire.

“He had very little to say for himself but he understood what I expect. I’ve left the money with Miss Montilyet.”

“What money?!”

“Didn’t we just agree it all comes back to coin, Evelyn?”

“Papa!” Evelyn unconsciously began walking faster, as if getting to the bridge and putting them all into a carriage would make her face less red. “Grey Wardens aren’t…they aren’t paid to kill darkspawn. I don’t think.” She looked back to Vaan, hoping he might chime in.

“Wardens still need to eat, my lady.”

“I’m reasonably sure they _have_ to kill them. It’s some sort of compulsion.” In truth she had no idea. Blackwall only ever seemed to speak to tell her to move aside or stop trying to help. The way he said 'Lady Trevelyan' one would think he had a mouth full of wormwood.

“People say they can hear darkspawn and deepstalkers, underground, in caves.” Vaan made a sour face.

“He didn’t want to go into great detail,” her father sniffed. “Very little to say.”

“Probably because you ticked him off! Maker, how embarrasing. I'll just bet he had a face like a cat's arse.” Evelyn slipped and stopped to scrape frozen mud from the heel of her boot, still holding her father’s arm for balance. “You called him into Divine Justinia’s quarters and what? Told him you would toss him a few Royals to keep an eye on your daughter? Papa, that was entirely, _utterly_ inappropriate. You can’t just-”

“I can and I will.” Arms crossed over his chest, her father scowled down his long nose at her, turning until the sun was at his back and his shadow fell over her.

Evelyn couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken angrily to her. Certainly it was well before Siggy was born. Possibly before she was even married.

“Learn to use those words, Evelyn. You are of House Trevelyan. We will do as we must. Always.”

She blinked back tears again, turning her head away from the children pretending not to notice Lady Trevelyan getting a dressing-down on the side of the road. “I have been walking a fine line here, Papa.”

“Fereldans are not known for playing nicely with anyone but dogs and the dwarves buying their ponies. They have no discretion and no patience for Marchers in their muddy little farms. Show them weakness and they will be at your throat.” Arto nodded, waved to a group of very young soldiers struggling up the icy road with heavy packs over their shoulders. “A Warden at your back is good tactics. Come along then, Evie.”

There were more people here, closer to the King’s Road but most were going up, toward Haven. A pair of old women led mules with two tired children straddling sacks of whatever possessions they had saved upon fleeing the countryside. Mages were hiding in caves and took farms by force when hunger set in. Evelyn wondered what the people seeking refuge would have to say in two weeks - after she brought a hundred more apostates through the gates.

Her father was in his element, blithely smiling and pretending not to notice the spectacle they made. Or maybe he didn’t need to feign calm. Evelyn had never lost the suspicion that people staring at her found fault. Even before her husband’s death had become the family’s blemish, she would rather have been off to one side, not prodded to the front at every Midsummer Ball or important wedding. But a ladylike foil to her brothers’ bravado was what Mother intended.

Evelyn squared her shoulders and made eye contact with the next local who stared at her hand. The one after that pulled his cloak tighter and passed a little faster.

“Papa, please take everyone. I can’t bear thinking something will happen.”

“My girl, I will have a dull ride up Lake Calenhad, a dull but grey crossing, and a dull winter.”

“Papa, please.” Her eyes filled and she let them. If anyone noticed, they could come to all the correct conclusions. The Herald of Andraste was bidding her father farewell, and she was already missing him. If they could see into her head: she was terrified of Papa falling to some accident and her oldest brother Charles leaping into Arto’s seat with belligerent glee. “Siggy’s letters have to be there on time,” she sniffed and tried for a laugh. “I will have sent as many more by the time you’re home. Nanny’s eyes aren’t what they were, you will have to do the reading.” Evelyn leaned into his shoulder. “You must do the funny voices, as well. Siggy will insist.”

She lost track of things after that. Her father’s carriage caught up to them. Rather a lot of crying happened, though it was hard to say which of them was more horrified by her tears. In the midst of her weepy outbursts, Evelyn stuttered her way through all the reasons she wanted Siggy with his grandparents and not her oldest brother. Not any of her brothers. Charles’ greed knew no bounds, Deiderick made bad wagers with dodgy foreigners to say nothing of the spoiled terrors his five children had become. Nanny loathed Loren’s Val Firmin wife and where Siggy went, Nanny must go too.

“All right, Evie, all right,” he finally sighed. “Vaan and Clark will come along, though I won’t need them. Because nothing will go wrong. Nothing at all, and after this,” he took her left hand and squeezed gently, “Is healed you will be home.”

“Please be careful.” Evelyn blew her nose. “Sorry,” she muttered, tucking the soggy handkerchief away.

“Now then,” Arto climbed up into his carriage and cleared his throat, swiping his own tears away quickly. He unbuttoned his topcoat and sat, leaning out the open door to kiss her forehead. “What else can I say to put your mind at ease?”

_Say you’ll do as Vaan tells you. Say you’ll keep your head down and stay clear of Templars. Say you will make it to Ostwick and keep Charles from climbing over you and running our family into the ground. Say you won’t let him turn me and Siggy out on our ear. Say I won’t die in these mountains._

“Promise you will give Cook my list the moment you’re through the gates,” she said instead.

He laughed and kissed the top of her head through the hood she had pinned back to show the elaborate braids and careful cosmetics he expected of Lady Trevelyan in public. “Peppercorns, wasn’t it?”

“And coriander, mint - as much mint as you can pack into a crate. Cloves, cinnamon, basil. Lemon rind!”

He pulled the door shut as the horses stamped in place, but smiled down at her through the open window.

“Don’t laugh! These people know nothing but onions and garlic. You don’t want your only daughter to starve.” Evelyn bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood but couldn’t stop herself adding, “If something happens tell Siggy I’m sorry - that Mummy didn’t mean to lie to him.”

Her father’s indulgent smile cracked as the carriage jolted forward. He fell back into his seat with a hand over his eyes, his thin lips pressed tight together. Evelyn yanked the long pin out of her hair and pulled her hood as far forward as possible while she rushed back behind the iron gate. In the shadow of the bridge she slumped on an empty barrel out of sight to cry, feeling like a trench had been carved through the middle of her, its edges raw with misery and spreading ever wider.


	5. 5

“So much for my casting an aura of calm and strength.”

Evelyn wiped her chin with the back of her hand then spit one last time into a clump of orange wildflowers a few inches from her nose. She sat back on her heels, brushing crushed grass from her palms.

“Don’t sweat being strong, Princess.”

“No?” She took the water skin Varric held out and rinsed her mouth with a grimace until she thought she could speak again. “Neither Cassandra nor Cullen seem to care what I do or say, so long as I show no weakness in front of their soldiers.” She gave the water back. “Thus my sudden exit from camp. Nervous vomit doesn’t befit a Herald.”

“Right. Look at Kirkwall.” Varric said. “What’s left of it. My hometown is blown to shit. All because one skinny mage wanted to prove how _strong_ he was.” Varric had a sip of water then offered a hand to pull her up from her knees. She took it carefully - to avoid his broken finger bound tightly to its neighbor. “Keep your head down and pitch in where you can. The rest of us will manage.”

Evelyn smiled back at him. Varric never failed to be just at the edge of her vision when someone was needed. “Are all the - wait, is it Tethras or Tethrases?”

“My brother Bartrand insisted on Tethras, single or plural. Probably thought it sounded more noble.”

The peeping of birds in the trees picked back up as they worked their way around shattered stone thrown aside by magic weeks or months earlier. The edges were unnaturally sharp. Brushing against a knee high boulder would mean torn clothes and bloody scrapes.

“Are all the Tethras as sweet?”

“Sweet?” Varric laughed, looking left and right on the way back to camp. Ready for anything but always smiling. “I’ve been cribbing lines from Bianca. She’s the sweet one. I’m just a dwarf who doesn’t mind seeing puke.”

Evelyn had never met a dwarf who wasn’t a flirt, and she said as much. She poked a finger into one of the half dozen narrow pockets sewn into her jacket and fished out a cinnamon pastille. Adan in Haven called them Toothsavers, sneering at the Orlesian name but either way she was grateful for them. There was already enough closeness in the Inquisition without everyone smelling the sick on her breath.

“You’ve just never met any Carta, Princess. Not much for flirting. The dwarves you’re used to in the markets back in Ostwick are trying to get a few more silver out of you ladies.” Varric looked over his shoulder with a wink.

“We were never introduced, no, but I do know your Carta aren’t above sending nasty letters delivered by nasty couriers.” Evelyn said. “My brother, Diederik, got in over his head a few years ago. It took an awful lot of gold to get him back out.”

“Ohoho!” Varric laughed, hitching the crossbow higher on his shoulder. “Hidden depths. Family drama! This is all good background. But don’t tell Cassandra, she won’t find it funny the Trevelyans got mixed up with shady types.”

“Hmm.” Evelyn crunched through the rest of the sweet. The more she talked the more likely she was to spill too much. Varric was dangerously easy to confide in. He and Cassandra were hardly on good terms, either. It would be wonderful to say aloud all the ways Cassandra still made her nervous. 

“What kind of _hmm_ was that? Got some more of those sweets?” Varric held an open palm over his shoulder without looking back. “Thanks,” he said indistinctly, popping one into his mouth. “This batch are really spicy. Anyway, you’ve got a real nice Good Guard Bad Guard scam going with the Seeker. It worked on that Alexius creep and just this morning the scouts were ready to go claim a hill for the Inquisition. So stick with it tomorrow in Redcliffe.”

“Somehow I don’t think we’ll be so successful twice.”

“Oh come on, we get to sneak into a castle and foil the villain’s plot. He’s a Magister with a slave army, too. Who does that for real?”

Evelyn nodded at the young woman standing guard as they cut through a narrow gap between boulders at the outskirts of their camp. She ducked her head with a fist against her chest then turned away again.

“I meant what I said about keeping your head down, though.” Varric lowered his voice, walking close enough that Bianca nudged her elbow when they stepped carefully over tent pegs and neat piles of kindling between small cook fires. “We’re gonna have to fight our way out of there.”

“My plan is Don’t Die.” Evelyn blew on her cold fingers and squinted through a column of smoke in the wind. “Which includes not freezing to death overnight. The Fereldens say this isn’t true winter yet - I hope they were teasing.”

“It’s all the back and forth that’s done you in.”

Warden Blackwall’s thick East Markham burr cut through the clatter and thud of an armful of dry wood dropped behind her. She jumped and turned around to face him. Too much of him. Evelyn took a step back, bumping into Varric’s foot.

“You’ve gone from indoors to out too much.” Blackwall said. He crossed his arms over a barrel chest as he spoke. The ends of his odd forked beard caught in the ragged green wool of his padded coat. “In Haven you sleep in a cabin, then come back out to tents. Takes ten days to acclimate yourself to sleeping rough. Go back to Haven, ten _more_ days.”

While Evelyn marveled that he had spoken in a civil tone and was willing to say more than a handful of words at once, he ruined it by frowning and jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“Since you’re not busy, my lady, you could help me catch your supper.”

“Varric has something going already.”

“Fatty fish, that’s what you need to eat if you want to stay warm.” He nodded at the tent she shared with Cassandra. “Never leave camp unarmed, Lady Trevelyan.”

“Not a bad idea, Hero.” Varric gave her an odd look and stirred a pot over their fire. “You Ostwick harbor types know all about that, right, Princess?”

Evelyn looked between the two of them. “Warden, if you need someone to _shoot_ a fish as it swims by, Varric is your choice. I may be more in practice now but I am not up-”

“You’ll see.”

_Berk. Just what we need more men barking orders._ She ducked into the tent, snatched up her bow and only a handful of arrows. Her right shoulder ached all the way down to her elbow. And then there was the thing in her palm. A heavy quiver could wait.

She caught up to him just at the edge of camp. In the awkward squeeze through a narrow passage he stepped on her foot.

“Pardon me.” She muttered, flattening herself against the rocks to let him through.

“Let me go first, Lady Trevelyan. Bodyguards stay three steps back but that only works in the city.”

“I’ve not thought of you as a bodyguard, Warden.”

“Too right,” he sneered. “You want one of those there are recruits the Commander can pull from training. Outdoors you don’t poke your head out first, my lady.”

“We’ve no nets.” Evelyn answered, changing the subject before she said something sharp. “Will we need poles,” she called to his back. He had the loping pace people in an army all shared. Cullen was the same. They ate up ground without any effort and she took two steps for each of Blackwall’s.

“You’re armed, that’s enough.”

“I am not up to shooting a fish.” She said again. _You hairy git._ She dropped her arrows beside a fallen log at the edge of the river. Someone had already laid out branches for a fire. Blackwall took a hatchet from his hip and offered it to her. “Cut chips, Warden?”

“Right you are.” He shaped hemp fibers into a sort of nest then pulled a tinder box from his pack.

Blackwall was good at fire. Very good. Evelyn had never been more than a few yards away from an open flame in her life but servants kept the hearths going and doused the lights of an evening. She hadn’t paid much attention to the process of fire before the Conclave. Now that she was always cold, it was something to think about.

She got settled on the sandy shore to hack small pieces from a dry chunk of pine tree he had obviously left for the purpose. Blackwall shed his heavy brown gloves to pick up a stone and send a few sparks flying from his firesteel - twisted into a curve and well-used. The hemp glowed orange as he breathed gently into his cupped hands until smoke bloomed.

Evelyn arranged the bits of wood she had made into a rough triangle. “I noticed the piece of pyrite on your shield and you keep a firesteel in your boot, even with the box as well. Why all three?”

He nodded, carefully tucking the tiny fire under her kindling.

“Lost my pack once, fell through the ice crossing a lake. Got myself out but my tinderbox was gone with the pack. Not the first time I had a taste of freezing to death, but I swore if I got through that night - never again.” He fed the fire dry twigs, blowing until the smoke went white.

It stung her eyes. The smell of burnt rope made her think of miserable mage caves near the horsemaster’s valley. The boys they led back to the Crossroads with rags ties round their feet, shivering so hard they sloshed the bowls of watery soup Corporal Whittle pressed on them.

“I shouldn’t make jokes about freezing should I?” Evelyn returned his hatchet.

“Pah.” Blackwall sat back on the log. “I’m freezing, I’m starving. It’s something you people say, doesn’t mean anything. Not until you’ve watched the sun come up twice on an empty belly.”

_Some day my footnote in history will read: Briefly Andraste’s Herald - Trevelyan was known for enduring one awkward silence after another until the demonic mark was finally removed._

“We don’t have a river like this at home.” Evelyn looked away from the work of fire and out over the rocky riverbed. “It’s so fast.” The water in Ostwick was tamed into canals and the sounds it made were commerce: jetties bumping into piers, slow songs matching footsteps as a dozen men pull a barge by ropes when the water was too low. And in winter when she looked down from the back parlor-

Evelyn shook loose hair out of her eyes. That sort of thinking only led to tears. Blackwall had taken off his boots and was pulling off his stockings - one needed mending. He rolled his breeches up to his knees then waded into the water, pointing at some particularly large flat rocks upended in the shallows.

“You recognize those, hmm?”

She stood up and edged closer. He began pulling smaller stones up from the mud to wedge in open spaces.

“Oh! A fish trap.” She heard a crackle behind her and rushed to add more branches to their fire before the wind made it smoke. “I thought those stones were…something else.” She shut her mouth at his look of disdain.

“What else could it be,” he huffed, wet up to his elbows as he finished closing the last hole where a fish might escape the spiral.

“The beginnings of a little foot path to cross over. Or something children had done playing.”

“Show me a sprog who can heft these and I’ll have him running shield drills tomorrow.”

“Point.” Evelyn came back to the edge of the water with her bow. “At least it is clear.” She looked at the funneled area Blackwall had created skeptically. Her hands ached as she cracked her knuckles. “I do hope it’s an awfully big one.”

“Yes, Lady Trevelyan.” Blackwall shook his hands dry and waded carefully to shore. “Shoot the big fish not the big bloke.”

“Was that a joke, Warden?”

“No.” He stepped up onto the grassy part of the bank. “You shoot me I’ll be right put-out.”

There was nothing to do but wait until something edible swam into range and lost its way in the spiral of rocks and reeds. Some of the boys in Haven _were_ sprogs, as far as she could tell. Too young to be lined up on the snow learning to break bones with the flat of a sword while Blackwall barked commands and counted out their steps. Mistakes were corrected without shame, in a flat voice. Only praise carried any inflection.

The difference between the Warden and Cassandra was unexpected. City guards, tourney fighters, all warriors had once seemed the same to her but she knew better now. Cassandra fought fast and hard with a grim scowl that made the scar on her cheek stand out. She invoked the Maker and never taunted the grimy men who blocked roads with overturned carts and the bloated carcass of a dead horse. But training was one of the only times Evelyn saw her smile openly. She laughed when she sparred with Cullen in the evenings, trading blows and jibes through panting breath.

Blackwall laughed at dead demons. He grinned and spat blood in the eyes of mad templars who were fool enough to rush him. He had lectured young men along the road more than once about the solemn duty of a Warden but in the middle of things he seemed to enjoy himself.

“While I have you here,” she sat on the other side of the fire, close enough to warm her shins and hands. “I apologize if my father gave offense last week. He can be abrupt.”

“Don’t mind abrupt.” Blackwall said without looking up. “Abrupt gets things done. He’s got no need to push coin at me to do my duty, though.”

Evelyn nodded, her face going hot. “Yes. That. I _am_ sorry. He hasn’t ever gotten his head round the fact that not everyone is motivated by-” she stumbled over the words, too busy wondering suddenly what in Thedas the Warden spent his coin on. It wasn’t clothes or gear. His pack was made up almost entirely of patches. “Motivated by the same things,” she finished.

“A Bann thinks his daughter is worth more than a farmer’s. That’s the way of powerful men. It’s one more tally of gained and lost.” He made a sour face under all that beard. “The horse he left you is worth ten of the others. Fine animal.”

“Isn’t he?” She grasped at the change of subject gratefully. “But he knows it. Whim is the fussiest horse I’ve ever seen.”

“Out of his element. Doesn’t know what to do, I’d wager.”

_The copper drops_. “He’ll manage,” Evelyn sighed. Subtlety wasn’t Blackwall’s strength. The Mark stung suddenly so she tucked that hand under the other and took a deep breath. The Hinterlands were cold, but the air tasted good at least. “He hasn’t any choice in the matter.”

“There’s always leaving.” Blackwall shrugged, watching the river. “He looks clever enough.”

“Mm…yes. But to what purpose? He would have a long run ahead of him and a long swim across the sea before the harbor was in sight.”

"Passage can be bought no matter the weather. It’s more dear in winter, is all.”

She picked at a spot of dried pine resin on her sleeve. _Maker has he caught me out already?_ It took less than two days of searching the dead to begin slipping a coin here and there into her own pack rather than the pouch on Cassandra’s saddle. It was almost a substantial pile now. The gold her father left was enough to run - probably. _But nothing costs what it should out here in the middle of a bloody war. Blackwall knows…_

“I can’t skive off.” Evelyn pointed over her shoulder, back up the mountain to the green typhoon clouds above Haven.

“People seem to think enough mages could finish it.”

“Cassandra hopes so.”

At the mention of her name Blackwall nodded, as if that was enough proof. The stars in his eyes around the Seeker were another thing he wasn’t subtle about. He fussed with the fire, poking the ashes like they owed him a sovereign.

“Is something wrong, Warden?”

“Other than demons falling out of the sky everywhere you go?”

Evelyn felt her face pinching into the kind of frown her mother pointed at groundskeepers who tracked mud across her veranda. “Cassandra and I are in agreement about the mages in Redcliffe. Is this something you can’t be a part of?”

“Orders aren’t for arguing with.”

She waited though it took every bit of will not to look away. “Is the problem that the orders are from the Right Hand? Would Commander Rutherford be better suited?”

“Hah. That _magister_ was off kilter seeing a pair of-” Blackwall shoved the stick into the flames. “A pair of girls in charge but that’s Tevinter for you. The Seeker knows what she’s about.”

Over his shoulder and a hundred yards away the afternoon guard traded places for evening.

“D’you want out?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Should’ve said something before now, I know.” With another glance around though no one was in sight, he lowered his voice until she could barely catch his words over the sound of the river and the fire between them. “Maybe you’re not the only choice. Healers could take care of that,” Blackwall nodded to her left hand tucked tight between her other arm and her ribs. “I don’t-” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. It fell back in oily disarray until he shook it out of his eyes. “All I’m saying is if you want out of here, say so. I didn’t sign on for holding hostages.”

“Err, thank you. No, _no_ thank you, I meant.” Evelyn stammered. The thought of running away made her heart knock in her chest. Three weeks on the road with Warden Blackwall didn’t have much appeal. Or to be entirely honest, it did have a certain juvenile appeal. Perhaps. _Maker, I need to be normal again._

The Warden was a little dirty. Not in a bad way, in a distracting way. It shouldn’t be attractive. _Or perhaps it should, it should be perfectly all right but here I sit turning into one of those old dowagers lusting after stable hands, staring down at the men hauling barges in a slough tide._

_Maker, you were raised better than that, Evie. You should be grateful for every one of the people in that camp, not just the one with distracting arms and the shivery voice._

“I wouldn’t like you to think I don’t…appreciate the offer. Why do you ask?”

“Right thing to do.” After a moment of quiet he pointed at her hand. “That mage pours potions down your throat when we run into demons. Do you know what they do?”

“Solas says it’s full of felandaris, and a lot of other things. I know they make me sleepy.”

“You’re a sack of bloody potatoes.”

“They make it hurt less. This _thing_ eats its way up my arm the closer the Breach is.” Evelyn flexed the fingers of her aching hand. The Mark coiled like a snake around the bones of her wrist, dry and sharp where it rasped against itself. “I’m sorry you have to tolerate my uselessness.”

“Not what I meant, don’t get your back up.” Blackwall stood and paced to the water and back, looking over his shoulder at each turn. “It, your mark, it works by itself, yes?”

“I have no control over it. It’s a parasite, I’ve said as much.”

“Did no one tell _you_ one of those rifts popped out in the cells under the Chantry? Only hours after the Conclave blew. Somebody had the bright idea to haul you closer. Probably tried to feed you to the fucking thing. The hole closed but you were still out cold for days after.”

_Somebody_. “Cassandra?”

“Don’t know. They didn’t say.” His hands curled into fists and opened again. Blackwall never stood still, always pacing or sharpening a blade.

“How do you know this?”

He shrugged. “Soldiers talk, my lady. That mark is the only thing that works. Someone could use it _without_ you.”

Evelyn looked at the hatchet where Blackwall had left it on the grass. Her palms itched with sudden panic.

“That sounds…I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Prisoners do stupid things. They panic, make a run for it, and all it gets them is a knife in the back.” He spoke with a finality that left no doubt where he had learned these things. “Escape is too tempting.”

“I am not a prisoner.” The words came out wobbly.

“You’ve bitten off more than you can chew. I’ve heard you say it more than once: hostage. Pet. If that’s not asking for help without asking, what is it?”

“Varric. Varric put you up to this, didn’t he?”

Blackwall scowled but didn’t bother arguing. It was hard to tell under windburn and the light of the fire but she thought his cheeks above the line of his beard went red.

“Sneaky man. Bless him. ‘I’ve seen what happens to heroes.’”

“Hmm?” Blackwall sat on the other side of their fire to sharpen a pair of sticks. Conspicuously nonchalant. She had a feeling he was actually as calm as a wet cat in a sack, under all that hair and chainmail. _What kind of a life can that be - waiting for the Blight to finally take over? Waiting to go mad or worse?  Little wonder he looks ready to crawl out of his skin every morning._

“It’s something he told me when we came back to Haven. I thought he was joking but now I wonder.” _Dear sweet Maker, did he mean me and not himself? Ludicrous._ “I’m surprised to find you approve of shirking duty, of running away from...well, my responsibility I think.”

“Where I come-” Blackwall stopped himself with a sigh. “I’ve only seen one kind of outfit drug women on the road. _Slavers_.” He spat into the flames, a peasant superstition about calling up bad luck. “The offer stands. If you want out, now or later. What _do_ you want?”

That was such a loaded question she couldn’t find a way to laugh it off. It had been weeks since she felt as though she was allowed to want anything. Every moment was spent placating Cassandra, putting on a brave face. Evelyn blinked hard and forced aside the image of a small body curled up beneath crisp sheets, Nanny always tucked her charges in tight once they were truly asleep. Siggy’s springy smooth cheek under lips, the warm smell of his breath, his black eyelashes. _Home_.

“A drink would be nice.”

He reached over to drag his pack nearer. She tilted the bottle he gave her to the sunset, squinting at the handwritten label - _Rite Wine. Mostly whiskey probably. Warden Dagber 9:40_

“Is this safe?”

“Hasn’t killed me yet.”

With the ringing endorsement she gasped her way through two fiery swallows. "I think-" a shiver caught her at the taste. "We have different ideas of lethal."

  


*******

  
Solas offered her another small fat bottle of his yellow potion. She shook her head. The cuts in her lip and inside her mouth had healed thanks to his spells earlier but that side of her face still felt too warm. Talking was too much effort.

She had nothing to say, not with both Cassandra and Dorian riding so close.

Around and behind her Cassandra’s soldiers muttered to one another. Half of them had been left behind to help the remaining mages out of Redcliffe and up the mountain. The ones behind her jostled each other with elbows, cackling about how easily the big bad ‘vint rolled over. Breaking into Redcliffe castle was the best thing they’d seen in ages.

One of them had a shrill laugh, and she found everything funny. Evelyn stifled a yawn but paid for it with an ache in her jaw. The creaking of stirrups and the noise of tack and armor all around soothed her. She had become numb now to the constant tedium of danger just out of sight - it made no difference. Nothing could be worse than the last day and night, if she and Dorian had truly been away so long.

He rode her old mount, his own Courser was skittish around weapons and had to be left behind in Haven. He looked nearly as bad as she felt this morning . T hough elfroot and the last of their Prophet’s Laurel healed the burns at his neck and shoulder. His skin was smooth again - it looked healthy and somehow _wrong_ showing through the charred gashes in his clothes. They both bore grey rings of dried muck on their trousers. Hers higher, as the foul water in the castle’s dungeon had come up nearly to her waist.

Whim shivered beneath her and she forced her fingers to stop clenching the reins. Evelyn repeated her older brother’s words from twenty five years ago. _Keep your hands soft and keep them to yourself - your hands won’t stop the horse from doing anything. He listens to your feet and your legs._ Whim took her inattention as an opportunity to crowd the horses in front, snorting and stretching his neck.

Blackwall twisted around to frown at both of them.

“Sorry,” Evelyn croaked, then cleared her throat. “Sorry. He’s accustomed to leading the way.”

Whim pranced a few steps, excited, hoping to force his way ahead. The motion jostled her until it felt like her barely healed ribs would stab her again. Whim settled so she took slow shallow breaths waiting for the pain but it never came. Everything itched. Even the protective enchantments on her clothes felt wrong this morning, the leather too slippery or sticky depending on how many spells had brushed against her.

The sun broke through clouds and she closed her eyes a moment. Exhaustion made her mind wander: the crates of knives and picks in that horrible place. Creaking chains, bones everywhere, bones…piles of rusted armor at the bottom of each stair. Endless stairs, up and down and back again, the Fereldan’s mace that broke her ribs.

Before Evelyn could do more than scream at the shock of pain, Leliana (that _other_ Leliana) had pushed the man off, her terrible scarred mouth twisted into a snarl. Blackwall’s elbow in his face knocked him the other way with a sickening crunch. Evelyn tried to avoid him falling but was toppled under the weight of his corpse before scrambling across the floor slick with his blood, her hair tangled in the dead man’s armor.

She ran a hand down her hair now, hastily braided again. There was grit and even a sharp bit of stone that pulled free. Maybe from a spell, something shattered…the inside was a mass of webs, oh Maker _a tooth._

She flinched, the piece of tooth flew away over Whim’s ears and she wiped her hand furiously on her grimy clothes. As she felt along the length of it pulled over her shoulder, her braid crunched under her fingers. It was matted with blood and flaky dried something. She tossed the braid back over her shoulder but couldn’t stop thinking about it scratching against the back of her jacket.

Her dagger gleamed in what was left of the sunlight. Cassandra’s eyes went wide when she saw her, turning in her saddle, mouth open to say something as Evelyn sawed through her hair in three quick jerks. The matted braid fell to the road. She shook her head, running a hand through her hair where it swung just below her collar. Already her neck felt odd, her head strangely light. The image of shining silver shears came to mind, and her maid cutting her hair the day before Sigurd's funeral so that she could look the part of grieving widow. 

"Better?” Dorian asked. His voice was rough with exhaustion but like nearly everyone she had come to know since the Conclave, he watched, he took note of everything around him. The sight of a naked blade always turned heads.

“Much, thank you.”

Cassandra looked between them with open suspicion, eyes lingering on her marked hand.

 

  
  
  
  
There were fish in the trap that evening. Three sleek, heavy ones she couldn’t identify. The clearing around her was crowded now with apostates, dogs, and complaining mules carrying hastily bundled tents and blankets on their backs. Dorian stayed close, cooking with ease over their fire. They talked nearly nonstop about nothing. It was like being at home, though having seen a nightmarish future rarely came up at a dinner party. But neither did eating on the ground with a tin plate balanced on her knee while strangers pretended not to stare at them.

Dorian excused himself when Blackwall’s heavy tread stopped just inside the circle of firelight. He dropped a leather sack the size of an apple in her lap.

“What is…where did this come from?” She poured a handful of silver coins into her palm.

“One of the lads started a business tonight. Genuine locks of Herald hair.”

“I - Who?” Disgust and embarrassment tied her tongue until all she could manage was an indignant noise.

“That’s not the point. It’s been dealt with.”

“Dealt with by whom?” Evelyn stood up, ready to march away from her fire. _And do what?_ No one nearby was looking her way. No one at all, which was suspicious. “How many of them, that is - I -”

“There’s his profits. What was left of it I tossed in the fire.”

“I want to know who.”

“Don’t fret about that. Trouble rolls downhill, my lady, and you’re too far up to be seen boxing a lad’s ears.” He looked her over, squinting at the sudden flare of the Mark reacting to her pounding pulse.

“I can manage my own affairs.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said, but sounding very much as if he did. “But leave it alone. He’ll be a tired bugger by the time we’re back in Haven, and for a good week after. Let the rest of them think you’ve got eyes in the back of your head, that your will is done with nothing but a pointed finger.”

“Lovely. More people afraid of me.”

“That’s how you keep a regiment in line.” Blackwall nodded. “They need to love and fear you in equal parts.”

Two days earlier and she would have demurred, said something glib about how much Cassandra’s braid might fetch, but not now. Now she let him walk away without filling the silence.

“Lady Trevelyan,” Blackwall turned back, thumbs under his belt, chewing his lip before he spoke again.

Evelyn put the money away and waited, wondering if the throb in her ribs was last night’s break healing or the potions wearing off or maybe she had a lung full of blood.

“It’s not good enough to let the Seeker take charge in front of the soldiers. If you’re the Herald, you’re the _Herald"_

“No, thank you but no.” She rubbed her gritty eyes then sat down on the sand cross legged, slumped like an urchin on the docks. “How many times do I need to repeat myself? Cassandra has things well in hand.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ve got a hundred apostates to fight for you now and you’re beholden to them. Command is a burden, not a prize, not if you want to see _them_ live through it.”

She looked over the field of small fires, shadowed shapes huddled together in twos and threes against the lights.

“Warden Blackwall, I would rather you didn’t repeat this, but I haven’t the faintest idea how to be a Herald. I can’t think like a general.”

“Think what you want, but act like you know what you’re about.”

“I _don’t_ know, Warden.”

“Then they’re all fucked. You should send ‘em into the woods now.” Blackwall came close again. “Redcliffe won’t take them back. You’ve seen how many of the girls are waddling, whatever the circles did to stop them breeding wore off. How far do you think they’ll get once winter sets in?”

“They need roofs over them, there isn’t any more room in Haven.” Evelyn scratched at her itchy scalp and wished for a tub of scalding hot water.

“Haven has timber and stone and strong backs who know better than to backchat their superiors.” Blackwall looked around the clearing before kneeling with a great deal of creaking leather. He shook his head. “What’s lacking is food and something to keep them from freezing at night.”

“Money.”

“You know how to ask nicely, surely.”

“Does writing letters begging for help qualify a person for command?”

“That’s half of it, on a good day.” Not for the first time she wanted to ask where he had been, where he had earned the weary fatalism that colored his answers. 

“Then yes. I will find the money, if you find a way to make soldiers into masons and carpenters.”

“Done.”

She felt her eyes watering at the enormity of it all. “How are you so certain?”

“Doesn’t matter how, it’s the right thing to do. Say it like you mean it, and the rest will fall in line.” Blackwall stood along with her. “Tomorrow we’ll have this conversation again, where the lads can hear.”

“Beg pardon?”

He bent and scooped up the pouch of coins where she had forgotten it.

“In the morning. While we break camp.” When she blinked at him, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose like she had given him a headache. His hand at the small of her back nudged her toward camp proper. “Lady Trevelyan, you’ll come swanning over and - loudly, mind - advise me of _your decision_ to build in Haven for the mages.”

“So that you can play the long-suffering unfortunate fellow who has no choice but to follow the Herald’s order?”

“Done.” Tonight he stepped aside to let her pass first between the boulders at the edge of the main camp. His arm came up, at her elbow and then he tucked his thumbs under his belt again with a frown. Someone, _somewhere_ had taught the Warden good manners, for all he fought against them. 

“I never knew there was so much theatre in an army. Is that really all we have to do?” Cassandra was already in the tent they shared, she could see her lantern glowing through the canvas. Evelyn lowered her voice reflexively, and wondered when the urge to hide from the Seeker would finally fade. 

“You’re welcome to pitch in with the building, my lady. Do you know how to make a dovetail join?”

“I can’t recall learning a dovetail. Is it a court dance or partnered?”

“Sixteenth notes, a borry,” he shot back. Something made its way through beard and scowl - very nearly a laugh but he covered it up with scratching his chin. The deep lines between his brows disappeared a moment. “Rubbish dance, the borry. G'night, then."

She was curled into her bedroll before she realized he had been serious, and intentionally butchered the Orlesian accent. _Where did a woodsman Grey Warden learn the Bourrée?_ Compared to her other choices, it made for a pleasant thing to consider as she waited for the Mark to stop twisting under her skin.

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	6. 6

Steam followed her out of the Chantry’s side doors. Incense and green rushes had once reminded her of weddings, of the unending chant on hot afternoons, of holidays in a starched frock. Now she breathed cold night air gratefully. The smell of a chantry had become the smell of arguments, snide jabs and the agony of faces turned her way expecting an intelligent opinion when all she wanted to do was shrug and hope Leliana had a good idea.

Evelyn would rather watch a bear baiting ring back home than listen to another moment of Roderick and Cassandra at each other’s throats. Her father was right: the clerics in Haven are all mad, every one of them. Men in the Chantry are out of place and Maker’s breath, did Roderick cling with his overlong fingernails to what little power remained to him.

Dodging a puddle the size of her foyer in Ostwick she picked her way through horse turds and piles of slush. The little town was nearly empty of trees. It was all replaced now by half built cabins and tents - tents everywhere. Closest to the Chantry they were mostly full of soldiers and sisters -  the mages preferred to keep to themselves near the lake. Lanterns made the canvas glow from within.

Without trails of urine carved through the snow  - and the sound of a cot scraping rhythmically against the plank floor of the closest tent as someone had fun - they would be pretty.

Somewhere between the Chantry and the timbered wall around the town, harsh voices, male and Ferelden cut through the cold. By the time she cleared a line of thorny bushes only one man was in view, the flap of a tent falling closed on a uniformed back. The tents next to it were buttoned up tight but she could hear boots scuffing the floor inside. Dorian’s distinctive laughter rang out as he gathered up books from the dirty snow.

“Lovely,” Evelyn sighed, pulling a bundle of scrolls from a bush. “Here,” she handed them over. “I see a few more in there.”

“I’m surprised.” Dorian bent to pull his bags from the muck around a tree trunk with a little chuckle. Not a hair out of place, he flicked wet snow away with a ripple of magic.

“By what?” She found a fallen branch to tease the papers from between thorns until she could reach them. Smelly, hulking morons. Prats.

“I thought for certain you would swoop into that tent and tell those nasty Dog lords where to put their bigotry.” He accepted the damp books, stuffing them in a saddlebag with more force than necessary - the only evidence of anger. “You seem like the type.”

She shrugged. “You’re capable of fighting for yourself. If I learned anything from my mother’s poor example it was that being shrill doesn’t get you far with men. I have the wrong accent, the wrong nose and the wrong set of tackle for those prats to care what I think.”

Either through luck or magic she was glad to see none of his gorgeous clothes were muddy.

“If I start now I will be haranguing Harritt tomorrow for putting them up to it. If I’m going that far, next it will be that slime selling the worst of the new swords to gullible peasants on the road.” Shouldering the smaller of the two bags, she turned toward the path. “Harritt has a right good bollocking coming his way. But not now. I need him working eighteen hours a day. Which he is less likely to do if he has been tongue-lashed by the uppity Ostie.”

Dorian nodded with a sigh. “Where are we going?”

“I’m hungry, Flissa should have something edible in the tavern.” She turned back to look at him where he had stopped. “Are you coming?”

His wry grin firmly in place, Dorian held out a hand for his bag. “Thank you, Evelyn, but I’ve had my fill of Haven’s hospitality for one evening.”

“A Blight on Haven’s hospitality. This is Ostwick hospitality on offer, since I was raised properly. You need somewhere to sit out of the cold while I find you a bed.” As he opened his mouth to refuse Evelyn dropped his bag to the gravel at her feet. Crossing her arms more for warmth than fuss, she blew her hair out of her eyes. “I have some thoughts on it already, so I don’t need your opinion. We have been traipsing back and forth through the Hinterlands for three bloody weeks running errands for illiterate farmers who would rather see us eaten by bears than loan out a few flea-ridden blankets for their frozen neighbors.”

A deep breath and she reminded herself to watch how loudly she spoke. _Don’t be shrill, Evie._

“This I would actually _like_ to do,” she said in a kinder tone. “For the person who saved their sorry arses from a very red, very pointy future where it rains demons.”

Dorian frowned at her, smoothing one corner of his mustache.

“Be a lamb. Go. Sit. Order wine for us while I find Leliana.”

He picked up the second bag, something inside it rattled and gurgled. He settled it across his arm and sketched an elegant little bow. “I defer to your judgment, Herald.”

His loose-limbed gait was lit by the glow of the tavern’s doors as he called over his bare shoulder, “Have you been practicing a speech like that for my inevitable eviction? I thought it went well.”

Prat. She wondered why he had ever agreed to bunking in with the men by the Chantry. Surely he would be more comfortable sharing a tent with other mages?

Leliana held court under a makeshift tent and she only ever left when it was too cold outside for sealing wax. Her ravens complained, hopping away and clicking their beaks until their mistress gave in and went indoors. Tonight she wasn’t alone in her corner of the room she shared with Cullen (though Evelyn had never seen him at the desk set aside for him) and her guest’s scent filled the space: attar of roses.

She was middle aged, which was odd. Evelyn had never seen Leliana in conference with a woman who wasn’t ancient or distressingly young. Evelyn recognized her as one of the merchants who had been trickling into Haven. She wore cheap boots and a good frock that was very much wearing her and not the other way round.

As the door closed behind her Evelyn took a seat on a rickety chair. “I didn’t think she was your type.”

“A clothier?”

“A woman her age. Our age. Don’t pretty young things make better sources?”

Leliana smiled at her as if she was a dim student. “Inara is perfect. She has a wealth of secrets at her fingertips.”

“What does it benefit to know who buys new stockings this week?”

“She has three children. Every evening she hears three different reports from opposite ends of Haven as they eat supper. Tavern girls are suspect but irresistible, as is the comfort of telling an old woman your problems. No one feels pressed to confess or to impress a woman like Inara, it is true, but neither are they careful with their words nearby. She hears a great deal.”

“She sounds very Ostwick.”

Leliana sat beside her, eyes intent. “Yes. Have you spoken to her?”

“No, not as such.” Evelyn watched the ravens preening their feathers rather than look her in the eye. “It is a very big city, and a big market.”

“Fiona’s right hand man, Mathis, was in the Ostwick Circle with your brother.”

“I haven’t found anyone who remembers him. Lorans would have been a decade ahead of him.”

Mathis had promised to keep an eye out among the refugees for anyone who mentioned an apostate at the right places in the right year. Evelyn had almost immediately regretted asking, as she found Mathis was distractingly handsome. In a dry-winter-air sort of way. He was wiry, made of sharp angles with hooded eyes. The elements hadn’t been kind to his skin but Evelyn had already noticed the way many apostates basked in the sun or turned their faces up to the first drops of rain. He was weathered beyond his years. He spoke in italics - low and with specific purpose.

“There are certain rumors circulating among the merchants and a few of the sisters who came from Ostwick.” Leliana said. “Would you like me to stop them?”

“No- not at all.” Leliana was a sharp knife without hesitation, and the dispassionate way she asked things like that made Evelyn queasy. “The more this place becomes a real town, the more likely there are Ostwickers. It can’t be helped.”

She nodded, her lovely red hair swinging over her shoulders.

“But now that you mention it, are they saying the sort of thing I should expect?” Evelyn’s face felt hot but she forced herself to stop nervously rubbing the rough spot on her cheek. As long as she was shooting every day it would never fade, anyway. When Leliana said nothing, she added, “Am I a Merry Widow or unlucky and forever in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

The cold slap of Sigurd’s arm against the puddled tile of his bath, his eyes gone cloudy from hours under the soapy water came back to her. The body had looked like a fish spilled out of a herring boat, blue and limp as his valet howled in grief, pulling him from the tub, patting his cheeks until thin trickles of pink water ran from Sigurd’s nose to join the puddle under his head.

“Accidents happen.” Leliana said softly. She must have mistaken Evelyn’s nerves for fond memories, because she smiled in her chilly way.

 Isn’t that what every Ostie wants, a dead husband and a house empty but for his money?

“It was an accident.”

“Of course,” Leliana nodded again. “That was unworthy, I must be overtired.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself, three years has been enough to accustom myself to his loss.”

There was a comforting back and forth to this: to smiling around the bile rising in her throat, to watching the woman across from her judge their relative positions and ultimately decide there was nothing to be gained by hostility. Like being home again.

“These arrived yesterday but I forgot to send them along.” She gave her a bundle of letters. The seals all looked intact but as she flipped through them Evelyn doubted very much someone like Leliana would allow her staff to do a poor job of snooping.

“Wonderful, thank you.” Her father’s loopy hand was on three of the five, and one of the smaller letters was sealed with two circular indentations - the eyepiece of a sextant pressed into the wax. Her fingers went cold at the sight of Pietro’s crabbed penmanship spelling out her name. “I won’t keep you further but I did stop by for a reason.” She tucked the letters away and balanced carefully on the line between asking and demanding Leliana find a permanent place for Dorian. She left with a key in her pocket to the cabin Josephine had been saving in case someone important arrived.

Pietro’s letter was what she expected: polite but full of old anger, all tied up with a bit of pleading.

 

**…and that you are well? The things we hear about Haven keep me awake nights.**

**I know of course, you had nothing to do with the Divine. I would tell anyone who asked - and I would remind them with a fist if they needed it. The Conclave is all anyone wants to talk about from the moment we hit port. It’s been so long since we spoke and my letters might not reach you now, I know that too.**

**It is our boy I worry for. Only three. To be without his mother so long it can’t be good for him. I am not stupid enough (but I am stupid, there is no arguing that, for I have written this letter over three times now and it is stupid to send it at all) to set foot in Bowman’s Bastion. I wouldn’t want his first sight of me to be one of the guards frogmarching me into the canal.**

**There’s a chance you’ll never see this, and a good chance you won’t answer even if you do read it. Maker knows any pleading from me has always fallen on deaf ears. Still, he has a father and I’m a good one, Nell is always saying so. If you aren’t coming back I will go to the Bann and hope he can be reasoned with. Our boy won’t be an orphan as long as I am here.**

**-Pietro**

**I would rather you weren’t dead - but not answering because you still hate me. Just so there isn’t any confusion.**

Evelyn wiped her eyes on the edge of her shawl and held the parchment in the flame of a torch jutting out near the main gate. _Siggy, I’m so sorry my grubby little grub._

She held the burning letter until her fingers were singed. The small pain helped push aside the image of his fat baby hands gripping her thumbs. Better to think of Sigurd instead. Sigurd dead in a puddle on the floor. She had never once set foot in his bath before that morning. Better to think of the surprising number of bottles and jars on his windowsill, the gleam of his razor or the way he had left his clothes in a pile by the copper tub.

At the time she had felt fear, not relief or even a grim enjoyment. But in that moment she knew there was not enough to justify a dead husband - not even to the girls she had grown up with, who loved her and almost to a woman would be happier as a widow themselves. Sigurd had never raised a hand to her, never embarrassed her in public. He hadn’t cared enough to bother with her, good or evil.

“Herald, if you’re going out, begging your pardon, we’re supposed to go along.” The guards on duty tonight interrupted her thoughts, glancing at her then at the gate.

“Thank you, but I won’t be long.”

“Err, Seeker Pentaghast was specific-”

She smiled and slipped through the open space. They muttered behind her but kept their posts.

Someone was pulling a clanging, creaky pile of metal away from the low stone barrier around the darkened smithy. Blackwall - who else would be working this time of night? _Does he never sleep?_

A few steps farther and she had decided not to speak, but he looked up so that it was more awkward to pretend not to have noticed him. He never spoke to her in the same tone twice. If only they could come to a consensus she wouldn’t need a five minute warning to compose herself.

“Good evening.” Close enough now to see a rusted cage clearly against the snow, Evelyn wrapped her shawl tighter. “Warden Blackwall, what is Harritt doing with gibbets?”

“Lady Trevelyan.” A nod of his dark head and he hefted one onto the bricks with a grunt of effort, then turned away again. “Scouts found these. Harritt can use the iron for other purposes.”

“Much better purposes.”  She entered the smithy proper, moving closer to the fire built up along the far wall. She had to nudge a ginger cat aside gently until it gave up rubbing its head on her boot.

“You don’t approve?”

“Of these? Dying of thirst in the hot sun?” She couldn’t quite keep her voice level. “No. I’m odd that way.”

Blackwall pried stalactites of rust away with pliers and tossed them into the slag pile without looking, his face sour. “Criminals earned their punishment. Their victims deserve justice.”

“These don’t dole out justice.”

“Ostwick had its fair share of crow’s cages hanging by the gates last time I was there.” He made a dismissive noise and snapped more rust away. “But ladies must have their own idea of justice, then.”

Evelyn picked at a loose stone while she decided how much to say. He watched from the corner of his eye but stayed quiet. Not one to fill an awkward silence. Which was a shame, the novelty of his Markham accent - heavy and round as a millstone - was a pleasure.

“I was frogmarched past the good people of Haven the day I woke up. I assure you - some were looking to tie me to a stake or worse.”

“You know the Seeker wouldn’t have allowed it.”

She let that go as there was no use arguing with him over Cassandra’s supposedly perfect judgment. But he hadn’t been introduced they way she had. Waking up to a furious woman in armor jabbing the tip of a sword under her chin had left an impression she would never shake.

“Harritt and Seggrit didn’t want justice that morning. They wanted to see a Marcher lady thrown into the lake with a stone round her neck. If there had been a few of these ready,” she poked the jumble of iron staves on the workbench. “By now I might be nothing but bones with the birds pulling my hair out for a nest.”

“You may have a better idea of justice than some.” He looked at nothing but his work, though his voice was diffident. “Harritt seems to have made peace. He’s crafted you good armor.”

Taking it for the truce it sounded like, she shrugged. “I was raised to run a manor. It takes a deft hand and I won’t always like the people we need most. This little endeavor can’t afford to waste anything or anyone. So, thank you for taking these apart.”

He turned away to stoke the fire, pulling off his gloves. Half his face was lit up red by the glowing coals. Evelyn knew she was staring as she crowded closer to warm her hands but couldn’t stop herself. The memory of his normally fierce expression instead glowing red with lyrium and horrified confusion needed to be driven away. A Blackwall afraid was nothing she ever wanted to see again.

“My lady?” His eyes darted between hers and the fire.

“There were a lot of these hanging around Alexius’…future.” Though it made her skin crawl she forced herself to look back at the rusted wreckage of someone’s prison. “Dozens. All full.”

“I have to ask.” Blackwall began untying a cord wrapped around the old gibbet. “What was I like in that dark future you saw?”

“You were heroic.” It was the easiest answer and one which seemed to satisfy him. She was surprised he thought she might have said otherwise.

“At least I was some use in the end.”

“You were more than some use. You thought you were mad. We had a difficult time convincing you we had moved ahead a year.”

“Having a hard time believing you now.” He shook his head and finally picked up the cat trying to eat his twine. “Enough, moggy, give over.”

“What is the last thing you remember?” _And why have you waited three weeks to ask me about this?_

“Talking to that dodgy ‘vint.” Blackwall cleared his throat and put the cat back on the hearth. “I remember a hole in the air, and you and the _other_ ‘vint,” here he sneered but said nothing worse, “You both vanished for… ten seconds then came back looking like you’d been in the wars.”

She leaned back against the warm stones of the smithy as the wind picked up. “We came back in the cellars - dungeon I suppose. You were the easiest to find. Despite not believing I was real you were more than ready to chop your way through Alexius’ guards. You knew your way around. I think-” She winced, ashamed of herself. _No one wants to hear about how they met a grisly end, Evie._

“You think? Tell me, then.” The tension in his shoulders as he braced himself against the hearth said he expected the worst but still wanted to hear it.

“There was red lyrium inside you.”

“You said it was everywhere, growing out of the walls, even.”

“Yes and some of the bodies we saw were worse than others. Fiona was- it was awful. Ah, you were not so far along. Your voice was strange, there was a metallic echo to it. Like talking into an empty milk pail. I found you in a cell alone and afraid.” If it was anyone else Evelyn would have put a hand over his on the stones but the Warden didn’t invite liberties. She kept her hand to herself. “Which was…more unnerving than the glowing red eyes. I think you were down there a long time. I’m sorry.”

“If I had a chance to cut some down, it’s enough.” His eyes, their own pale blue now of course, were harder than normal under his heavy brows. “What was it in the end?” A gust of wind caught them again, Blackwall stepped to the side until he was blocking most of it.

“We needed time to use the spell. Dorian wanted, um…he didn’t understand what we were up against. But you did and of course none of it stopped you turning right back around to guard the door.” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering despite his kindness in keeping the worst of the wind off her.

“Then there was the bit where a demon kicked the door to splinters and I saw you thrown in like a big bearded ragdoll before Dorian jerked me back to the here and now.” With a forced smile she stood up straight and turned the edge of her shawl up against her ears. “I could have done without seeing the last part. Would you mind terribly if we talked about something else? There is no sense in worrying about something which - as far as everyone else in the world is aware - never happened.”

“Suppose so.”

“But since I’ll always know, I do think I should get you something nice. What does the average Warden-About-Town like?”

“Wouldn’t know.” He went back to work and the wind caught her full force again. Blackwall’s perpetual frown had carved two parallel lines between his brows that deepened now.  “I’m a warden who rarely sees a town.”

“A bottle of something strong, then?”

Even as the words left her mouth she wanted to turn and walk out of the smithy. This was exactly how things had gone with Pietro. Buying him little gifts: the Antivan sextant, a fur lined cloak for the cold air on the sea in winter… And all because he had wanted them, he had _wanted_ something from her. After years of Sigurd wanting only for Evelyn to disappear the sight of a man happy to see her, pleased to hear her voice, was wonderful. The moment Pietro mentioned a fondness for something she began making a list in her head of where it could be found and how to get it home then on to him. Sending a boy down to the harbor with a parcel was too obvious so she had to be creative.

_Oh Maker he’s asked me something. What was that?_

“Of…of course.”

“Only if it doesn’t delay us, mind.” He fiddled with the pliers, looking up through a fall of messy hair.  “But these are things I think the Inquisition could make good use of, the Wardens don’t waste much.”

“Yes, of course.” _Ugh. Maker. Maps…well. He has to show me the map if he wants whatever it is._ “Leliana can have your…um, your items added to the surveys. Her scouts seem to find the oddest things.”

“Sister Nightingale? Busy, I would wager.” Blackwall put his pliers down to take a sip of something in a tin cup kept warm by the glowing coals. “I won’t bother her with this.”  

He noticed her looking and offered her a cup of her own. She sighed over the steam. “Ah, proper tea.”

“Rare thing down here.” Blackwall nodded. “Don’t know where the quartermaster keeps finding more.”

“I asked nicely.” Her first sip scorched her tongue. “These people drink hot water and call it tea. But I also think Sera nicked a block from Redcliffe castle.”

“Sera? She doesn’t drink tea.”

“You never jotted anything down on that wishlist of contraband she thinks Josie doesn’t know about?”

He poured himself more tea. “Might have done.”

“You could have asked for something more daring. Sera thinks you hang the moons.”

“Sera’s mad,” he said fondly. “Mad as a cut snake.” The cat leapt up onto the anvil and butted his elbow, purring. “Shoo,” he said but didn’t push it away.

“Proof.” Evelyn put her cup down on the bricks. “You inspire great loyalty in the small and sneaky.”

“A cat is a poor judge of character.”

“This is what I like about you, Warden,” she laughed. His startled flinch sloshed tea over the edge of his cup. “Your sunny outlook. You’re oddly charming for a man I found wandering the forest.”

“I’ve always found myself more odd than charming.” His smile was faint and aimed at the cat trying to climb his shoulder. “But I’ll take a compliment from a lady. They’re hard to come by these days.”

“Compliments or ladies?”

“Both.”

He laughed like a drain and it made her stomach flop over. _Stop that._ The last thing she needed was to make a fool of herself over a doomed Markham...something. Convict, pirate, perhaps something as mundane as a third son or just a man who didn’t like the idea of a life in Markham’s silver mine.

A low whistle - three notes the mages in their camp by the lake used to signal one another all was well - interrupted the quiet that followed.

“What are you _doing_ here?” he asked, leaning against the anvil, thumbs tucked into his belt.

Evelyn found some of Adan’s sweets in her pocket though Blackwall declined. She tucked one under her tongue to buy herself time to sound nonchalant. “Gathering my courage to sprint to the tavern before the warmth wears off.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” He sighed. “Why were you at the Conclave?”

“Oh, I wanted away from Ostwick for a little while.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Same city, day in and out, it was tedious. Do you get back to Markham often?”

“Shall we stand here and lie to one another, then?” He scowled and scratched at a streak of grey in his beard.

“Yes, but it will have to be quick. Tomorrow I’m off for Orlais to poison the Empress’ soup, now that I’ve snuffed the Divine.” She reached out far enough to scratch the cat’s ears instead of looking up. “Your turn.”

He wrinkled his nose but went along after a moment’s thought.

“When I was eighteen I won the Grand Tourney with a sword I stole from a Chevalier’s tomb. I tried to return it later but there was an elf inside the tomb shitting on his bones, so I left him to his work and sold the sword instead.”

She accepted defeat with a laugh. “Thank you for the tea, I really must dash. I’m star- hungry.”

“Come on, then.” Blackwall banked the fire.

“Erm…I was thinking of the tavern.”

He shrugged, not looking up from the coals as he shoveled ash over them until they went dark. “Suit yourself. The kitchen will be making supper for the night watch. Pies.”

Both men at the gate were stiff and bright-eyed as they passed. Best behavior. She wondered if they were who Blackwall caught selling her chopped off braid as souvenirs after Redcliffe. Two kitchen girls bobbed curtseys as they crossed ahead of the gate with arms full of food.

“When I was younger I had a very romantic notion of kitchen girls.”

“So did I.” His quiet laugh was filthy and it made her hair stand on end.

“No, not like that. A pretty girl with sad brown eyes delicately crimping the edges of a single pie with a lattice crust. She sifts flour, thinks of her love gone to sea for months at a time, sometimes she braids bread dough into his initials.”

He gave her a look that was somewhere between pity and disbelief. Daft Ostie bint, that look said.

“It sounds dreamy when you’re fifteen.” Evelyn opened the door to the ramshackle kitchen Cullen’s soldiers had made from a barn and kept adding wood and shingles to as Haven became more crowded. “And when you’ve never seen people trying to feed an army.”

Military efficiency ruled inside. The night cook was a tall Orlesian woman in a flour spattered apron. She rolled a slab of cold dough out into something the size of a bath sheet then flipped it over onto six waiting tins. Her helper cut between the pans, missing cook’s hands by less than an inch with the knife as she poured filling into each and folded the corners over. The smallest boy ran them to the oven, pushing the tins back with a charred paddle as long as he was tall. Six pies built as quickly as they would be eaten.

She wiped her hands on her apron before greeting Blackwall with a spate of her native tongue, though Evelyn got only a quick curtsey. They all fell into Orlesian as she pushed food into their hands and insisted they sit on sacks of millet between the two warm ovens to eat. It was the only spot where someone wasn’t peeling, boiling or skinning something.

“Where did you learn Orlesian?”

“Orlais.”

“Nothing more specific? Just Orlais?” Evelyn caught a squishy cooked carrot as it fell out of the meat pie.

“Soldiers move around.”

Disappointment must have shown on her face because he chewed quickly and said, “I…er, I rather liked Ghislain.”

“It’s no Val Royeaux but it is pretty,” she agreed.

“Best thing to come out of Val Royeaux was Sera. I won’t miss it.” He shifted until he could face her without awkwardly twisting. “Sera’s a good teacher, yeah?” He polished off the last of his pie and began on an enormous chunk of buttered bread dripping with jam.

 _Butter may be in your food, darling, but never on it._ She could hear her mother twenty years past, whispering as her uncle slapped butter on top of the fish on his plate.

“She ought to be, for the amount she is paid.”

Blackwall finished his pudding before he answered. “Wasn’t supposed to mention the money,” he muttered and wiped his fingers.

“She didn’t. The Iron Bull mentioned the money. Very offhand,” Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Very casual. Something about how Josephine was relieved you had found something to do with the pay you keep _forgetting_ to pick up.”

“I told her- asked the ambassador to do something useful with it or put it in the poor box.” He scowled. “But she kept it in a drawer.”

“Is there a vow of poverty for a Warden?”

“Don’t need coin. I’m fed and supplied, I drink on the Inquisition’s tab.” He shrugged.

“But you work twice as hard,” she insisted. “You’ve trained the recruits, helped build, you should be paid for your effort. For that matter, I should join in with them, and stop being so afraid of swords.”

In her more juvenile moments Evelyn had given some thought to private training, if there was such a thing. The boys and bruisers Cassandra brought into Haven were eager to strip out of their shirts on a sunny afternoon of hitting one another with sticks. They needed no encouragement to show swooning farmers and tavern girls a welt or healing scar. But Blackwall kept himself laced up tighter than a Rivaini grandmother. Disappointing.

“No, you stick with Sera, she’ll make you quick. That girl’s a killer - draws blood and disappears. I can’t teach you anything but how to keep your knees bent and take a pounding.”

He sat up very straight on their sack of millet, mouth opening and closing like a fish before he squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh.

“Well, I already know how to do that,” she drawled, just managing to keep a stiff upper lip.

Blackwall groaned under his breath and opened his eyes on a pained laugh. “Didn’t mean it that way, my lady.”

She felt herself grinning at his tongue tied splutter.

“You’re - er…you’re welcome to train with the recruits. You are, after all, in charge.”

“Oh,” she folded the tea towel her pie had come wrapped in. A giddy sort of idiocy pushed her along. “Where do you start? Grip? Not too firm, though it depends on the sword, I suppose.”

“Now you’re taking the piss,” he shook his head. “Sera’s a bad influence.”

“Last week she showed me the proper way to blend Soul Rot, or rather, she attempted.”

“Poison’s not a thing to muck up.”

“Which is just what I told her.” Evelyn leaned back against the warm bricks of the oven. “You don’t grow up in a Bann’s house and not hear about poison. We may not play the Game on a grand scale but there are still the occasional intrigues.”

“Why play at all?” His nose wrinkled up and he began fiddling with a dagger he kept tucked into his boot.

“It doesn’t make sense from the other side.” Evelyn shook her head. “Ostwick doesn’t care about anything but commerce. If something slows trade we do away with it. We’ll never be on par with Val Royeaux, but duels and plots don’t provision a ship. At payday a stevedore doesn’t care how well his employer dances.”

Luckily she was stopped in the middle of what was becoming a dull ramble about her home, as a pair of soldiers careered around the corner, giggling with fingers entwined. Both stopped dead, staring at Blackwall.

“Ser! Sorry Ser, we’re off duty! That is-”

Neither of them looked like they could decide if it was worse to be caught necking in the kitchen by him or the Herald of Andraste.

Evelyn slid down off of the stack of grain. “We were just leaving.”

“That was decent of you,” he said when they were out in the cold again. He squinted at her a moment.

“You know, that would be more complimentary without the sound of surprise. Nevermind,” she said when he made to speak over her. “I will say something beastly tomorrow and put us back on proper footing. They only have one chance to be young and in love, I’m pleased to get out of their way tonight.”

“We start at first light,” he said, putting on his gloves. "Threnn will pull some gear for you. If you're serious about it."

“Beg pardon? Oh! Yes, I hear them all groaning and whingeing as they walk past in the mornings.” She held out her stack of letters, the first excuse that came to mind. In no world would she be out on the shore before dawn only to make a fool of herself with a wooden blade. “I’ve an awful lot of correspondence to catch up on, so if I’m not there start without me.”

 Scratching an itch can be managed with any number of men, she reminded herself as she walked away.  Chasing a man who was halfway to feral was a bad idea, especially as it seemed there was no escape from Ferelden now that winter was here.


	7. Chapter 7

_ If we manage this I deserve a proper fuck. _

The thought occurred to her as she stood poised to run into the still-smoking pit that had been the Temple. A gaggle of mages were lined up ahead of her. They were handpicked by Fiona and given the best armor Harritt could craft on short notice.

_ That bed creaks like a rotten pier. _

Varric was staring down at her when she could think clearly again, one cold hand on her brow and an empty vial of Solas’ potion in the other. She squinted against the clear sky overhead as he sat back and she let Cassandra pull her to her feet.

_ Done _ . She shook her left hand, looking closely at the inside of her wrist as everyone else stared at the back of her head. The Mark was still there but the potion stopped the pain, and the green light was fading, she thought. It seemed smaller. Done, and not a scratch on her, nor had she puked on anyone's boots. _ Well done, Evie. _

The rest of the afternoon she followed along in Cassandra’s wake, dreaming of home. Her attention was only caught when another stranger insisted on thanking her. Fiona kissed her on both cheeks, Cullen forgot himself and clapped her on the back when she wasn’t looking - nearly toppled her into the snowy lake shore. Old men from the Hinterlands below Haven swung her around in circles their ancient wives pressed her unmarked hand between their own. From the town’s gates to the tavern she was passed from arm to arm and kissed like a new bride.

Finally she begged off to collapse by the fire in the Singing Maiden. Now that the queerness of sitting in a shabby little tavern every other night had worn off, she thought she would miss it back in Ostwick. There were taverns of course, any number of them between Bowman’s Bastion and the Plantage - but she could hardly belly up to the bar alone amongst spice merchants and ship captains. Though how often had she been truly alone in the last four months?

Speaking of Ostwick, Mathis took fifteen minutes to do it but he eventually made his way through the crush of elves and humans by the fire to sit on an empty cask at her side.

“It looks like things will change come morning.” He rolled the sleeves of his robe past his elbows and accepted a tankard from a passing girl.

Evelyn laughed a little, not sure what answer was best. It was hard to tell when he or Fiona was only making conversation and when they were trying to gauge how far she could be pushed to speak for them later.

“I wanted to tell you I’ve had no luck regarding your brother,” he said. “Lornas would have been a few years ahead of my time in the Circle and we’re a young group here. Not a lot of the elders made it this far, you know.”

“Oh.” Caught with her cup halfway to her mouth, Evelyn forced herself to make eye contact rather than stare at the crooked scar across his chin. It looked like an old knife wound, not spell damage. It was strange to know the difference now.

“Thank you for trying,” she said. Flissa appeared and filled her cup again.

“There is always hope. Every season we find a few more of us who got away, who’ve been living free.” His eyes went hard and calculating but she had learned not to take that look personally from a mage. “That’s all we want.”

She made polite noises around a mouthful of the strong sweet wine. Mathis had very nice hands. The ridges in his fingernails - the same as everyone else who regularly drank lyrium potions - were less severe than some she had seen. She wondered if he buffed them away or if southern mages ever wore lacquer to hide them as Dorian did. He said something she couldn’t hear over the music and the noise.

“Beg pardon?”

He leaned closer and the firelight caught a pair of gold earrings in each ear. “I said victory suits you. You’ve never looked twice at me, before this.”

“I’ve had just enough wine to be gauche.” She sat up straight again with a shrug, hoping it didn’t look practiced. “But I  _ have  _ been looking. Flirting is not my best talent.”

Mathis laughed until he coughed.

Evelyn put her drink aside then snatched it back to keep it from being knocked over. There couldn’t be any more room, yet more people were crowding into the tavern every minute.

“It’s a good thing they locked me up before you Bann’s girls were of interest. I’d hate to see your lot  _ trying  _ to get someone’s attention.”

“Oh. Well then.” She looked over his head at the torches smoking in the corner and bit the inside of one cheek to keep from smiling like an idiot.

“I thought you were making sure I remembered to hunt up Lornas.” Mathis slid a little closer. “But is there more to it?”

Heart knocking against her ribs, lightning of nerves at the backs of her knees, she turned fully toward him. “There may be, yes.”

“The Herald being in our camp won’t go over well. But your cabin is probably the easiest thing to spot in town.”

She touched her hair, suddenly wondering just how messy it was. “You are very, um, forthright.”

“There’s only two kinds of sex in a Circle. Quick when you think you can get away with it or planned out for a month, with bribes and favors called in from the rest of your dormitory. If you’ve never tried training a rat to carry notes but not make a nest with them it’s bloody hard, I’ll tell you that for nothing.” He grinned when she laughed. The creases around his eyes bloomed and the bridge of his thin nose showed an odd triangular divot. “I prefer to speak up - I’m not shy and it’s simpler. Life outside is simple, you should always take advantage of that.”

“Give me ten minutes.” Evelyn drained her cup before she could lose her nerve, determined not to be the only person in Haven alone tonight. “Come to the Chantry, down below on the left after the stairs, but before the first set of gates.”

It took a long time to extricate herself from the tavern. Everyone wanted to pull her into a dance or put a drink in her hand. Mathis was waiting for her halfway down the dark stairs, blowing on his fingers.

“That’s the Divine’s quarters down there, you know that?” His scandalized whisper barely rose over the sounds of hymns sung above.

“Not really, I doubt she slept there more than a week. We use it as sort of an office now.” Evelyn pecked him on the cheek. Before she could do more than notice the rasp of stubble against her lips his hand was in her hair and he was kissing her. A little too hard but it was still good. He was warm and already making hungry noises, biting her lip as she nudged him backward down the passage and through the door that she locked behind them.

He gestured at the sconce closest to them and it sparked to life.

“Maker, this should be enough to put me off.” He jerked at his belt, looking around at the stacks of correspondence with a laugh. “I swore I wouldn’t set foot in a Chantry again but I didn’t know a shag with the Herald was on offer.”

“Ugh, don’t.”

“Sorry,” he nipped her ear. He might kiss too hard but his hands were just right, warm and deft under her clothes. “Tell me what you’d rather be called.”

“Anything but that.” She pulled his robes up to his waist and was met with a pair of thick woolen underthings tucked into battered boots at his ankles.  _ Well, it is cold out. Maker. _ The obvious line of his hard cock through the granny stockings was enough to prevent her laughing out of shock.

Mathis undid her trousers, one hand working between her thighs as much as he was able under the tight leather. “Sorry.” Evelyn wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for  still being dressed or for not being instantly wet. She toed at one boot, thinking to take them off. “This is easier in a frock.”

“Tell me about it.” He tugged at his robes with a laugh until the garment parted down the middle, revealing a lot of ginger chest hair.

He threw his head back on a groan as she took him out of those ridiculous wool britches. Luckily he was proud of his cock and didn’t take offense to her moving back until the light fell on her hand stroking him slowly. She had no intention of catching the pox no matter how much she wanted a man inside her - she needed a good look first.

Both hands down the back of her trousers now, he pulled her into him, leaning against a bookcase that creaked and coughed dust around their heads. “You’ve got a lovely ass. Can you open your shirt?”

A few books hit the floor as he bent to mouth at the skin she uncovered until he abandoned squeezing her arse to weigh her breasts in his palms with a fond sigh.

“So I’m sure,” his teeth and tongue found first one nipple then the other. “You do want to fuck me in here? Not that I’d turn down anything else but I’m keen to have you bent over that desk.”

They gave up on the rest of their clothes. Evelyn let him turn her around and suck a welt on the side of her neck as he played with her until his fingers were slick between her legs - finally. She wiggled her trousers down to the tops of her boots and braced her hands on Justinia’s desk. He groaned in gratitude when she twisted around to slick his weeping cock with spit, just in case. One hand flattened over the small of her back as he rubbed himself between her lips, teasing her until she shifted, trying to force him inside.

“Stop making me wait!” The Mark chose that moment to snap and flare green, as it hadn’t done all evening. Evelyn froze but he patted her arse with a chuckle.

“It’s only…um…” His voice trailed off on a shuddering sigh when he entered her. “Maker’s Breath, you’re burning hot - it’s only magic, y’know.”

_ It isn’t going away, it isn’t it isn’t - it’s moving _ . She forced herself to shut her eyes, rested her forehead on a stack of old letters and arched back into his next thrust. For a few minutes she tried to think of nothing but finding the right angle - sped up when he did, let herself be flattered by how he lost his rhythm if she clenched hard around his cock. She made enough room between her hips and the edge of the desk to touch herself.

He was polite enough to come on the back of her leg, wiping it up with the edge of his robe then he surprised her by insisting on taking over, pulling her fingers away and circling her clit himself while he panted into the back of her neck and muttered about how wet how she felt. She managed to come, short and sharp like breaking a branch over her knee - and such a bloody  _ relief  _ that her eyes watered in gratitude.

After a decent pause he patted her bare hip with damp fingers then stood carefully. “We’d better move.” Without his skin pressed against her she was suddenly freezing. “Somebody is bound to come looking.”

As she fiddled with the buckles on her jacket, pointedly not looking up, he ran a hand down her arm.

“Is a kiss all right?”

Evelyn nodded, watching him give her a tired grin from an inch away. He was sweet about it, ending with a few pecks and tucking stray hair behind her ear. The scar along his chin was vividly red under his smile.

“You go on ahead, we’d best not leave too close together.”

The bubble of warmth burst. Once again she was sneaking around in a back hall with a man who knew next to nothing about her. It was always rushed and furtive. Nothing to be done for it. _ I wanted a good rogering and I had it. _ She flashed a false smile then let herself out of Justinia’s room without a glance back, marked hand over her grumbling stomach.  _ A bite to eat, a pee, then bed. Alone. I deserve a lie-in tomorrow. _

The Mark twisted under her skin and lit the stairwell with a sickly glow. She shook it out, hoping it would quiet down enough to let her sleep.

Evelyn opened the door into the Chantry proper. THe hymns were gone, the sisters all huddled by the altar and warning shouts came inside with Cullen.

“Where is the Herald?” His scabbard swiped the legs of the candelabra as he turned back to wave at someone outside in the dark.

“Here! I’m here, Cullen, what is it?”

Mathis pounded up the stairs and shoved his way outside ahead of her. The hillside beyond the lake was alight. Hundreds of torches lit the trees. Piercing whistles and cracks of warning spells were almost enough to drown out the rhythmic clatter of pikes and swords slapped against shields in the distance.

“Templars!” Mathis rounded on them both, eyes wild. “You’ve grassed us to the fucking Templars. Bastards!”

“What? No!” Evelyn grabbed at his sleeve. “How do you-”

He whistled over the heads of the people who came instinctively toward the Chantry in their panic. The three of them fought through the tide to the gates.

“Send the signal! Get them inside, man!” Cullen waved frantically at the mages still standing by their tents on the shore, uncertain where to run.

“The better to shackle us together for delivery?” Mathis held his staff in both hands as a field of sparks grew brighter all around him, backing through the gate without taking his eyes off Cullen’s hand on his sword.

“Don’t be daft, they have to come in.” Someone brought Evelyn her bow and a quiver. Her own beautiful thing, carved from ivory and run through with lyrium. The last of the wine in her blood thrummed with false confidence. Templars. Cullen and Cassandra could manage templars.  

Cullen’s shaken voice as he offered her a spyglass stomped her own confidence flat. Whoever Samson was, Cullen wanted no part of fighting him or the creature she could barely make out standing beside him on the hill. When she looked away from the eyepiece the torches began moving down toward Haven. Fiona’s distinctive voice chanted something foreign to Evelyn’s ears but finally the mages came running - away from her on the shore.

The ice on the lake shattered and the neat and tidy tents tore themselves apart, whirling into a cyclone of broken staves and iron cook pots that Fiona’s magic threw across the water. Faint screams echoed back as the wreckage landed on the far side.

“Fuck me, you gotta try that sometime, Dalish!”

The Iron Bull and his Chargers lined up around Cassandra in front of the gate. They were wobbly with drink but obviously impressed by the Grand Enchanter’s first volley. They slapped each other on the arse and checked their armor while the beach was still out of range of arrows.

Fiona’s cyclone was the last thing that went right.

Those weren’t templars anymore. They were monsters riddled with red lyrium. Mad, grotesque, howling in fury they fought without any regard for their numbers. Berserkers. Evelyn was pushed back behind the mages who could fight, then dragged farther away as they lost ground until she was out of arrows and therefore useless.

They lost the shore. Cullen insisted the gates be opened one last time for a skinny boy in an oversized hat. He stared and tried to reach between the two bruisers Cassandra had assigned to her. She nudged them into stepping aside and he lunged for her, clinging to her cloak, his eyes wet and bulging. He pointed over the mountains to a dragon approaching.

“He is very angry you took his mages.”

She saw him from the corner of her eye as they fled the dragon. Blood soaked his sleeves up to the patched elbows as he led Roderick, poor man, to a seat inside the Chantry.

The scream of the dragon flying over the Chantry shivered the stones under her feet, it echoed up the empty stairs, it came up from the ground somehow. Everyone flinched, even Cassandra, who shoved Evelyn into the corner behind the enormous swinging doors. Probably out of habit, find cover.

Dorian twirled his staff, looking positively eager to go back outside. They were all clumped around her but suddenly the familiar sight of these people felt less like a barrier between her and monsters than a circle of hungry mouths waiting for the joint to roast.

Everyone smelled like blood and fire.  _ Maker not fire. Siggy, Mummy is so sorry my grubby little grub. _

“This was always going to kill me, wasn’t it, Solas?”

He shook his head but she cut him off before he could say anything soothing.

“I knew when it didn’t dissolve with the Breach - it’s - I can still feel it crawling up my arm. I can’t take it home.”

_ Siggy I’m so sorry. I love you. _

She felt herself smiling and couldn’t think why. Why try to reassure  _ them _ ?

Evelyn pushed herself to her feet and turned away from their staring. Her knees wanted to fail but she leaned into the wall until she caught herself pressing her forehead into the cold stones, her hands clawing at the seams of her jacket while Cullen and Cassandra argued over who would lead the survivors out the back.

 

  
  
  
“If we are to have a chance, let that thing hear you.”

The odd gangly boy followed Cullen with Roderick tucked under one arm. Everyone left. That Thing screamed overhead again, but Evelyn barely heard it.

_ Siggy. I’m so sorry my grubby little grub. _

_ Six months. Another six months until…no Dorian stopped Alexius, it can’t happen. Even if, oh Maker, even if it does Ostwick will be one of the last to fall, and Bowman’s Bastion the last of the houses. Surely someone can take him away. Somewhere _ .

“Herald- Evelyn, we need to move.” Cassandra’s helm was perched atop her head, her mouth drawn to a tight line.

_ I should have planned for this. _ A letter wasn’t enough, Pietro could sail north. The Qunari would have a better chance.  _ They’ve never fallen, they don’t tolerate magic. _

“One minute.” Evelyn twisted away from Cassandra’s hand on her arm to pace the alcove. Patting her pockets came up with a vial of Solas’ potion. At the very least she could be half-awake and numb when she was run through or set alight with a fireball.

“Where is that Qunari?” She asked no one in particular, since everyone was staring.

“Gone.” Blackwall swung his arms back and forth as he spoke, rolling his shoulders. Someone’s blood dripped off his armor in an arc to land on Sera’s shoes.  “Mercenaries fight for coin and the money is leaving.”

Josephine hurried past carrying a bag stuffed with parchment, a fur lined hat pulled low over her ears. Cassandra went after her. Evelyn caught Varric’s eye as he checked Bianca for damage. He joined her under the archway.

“Varric.” She was suddenly not sure how to ask.

“Evelyn.” He tried for a smile.

“I always knew Cassandra would pull rank if I outlived my usefulness,” she whispered. The potion was working now - warm in her belly, loosening the tension in her legs. “She’ll toss me over the wall to them.”

“Hey, Princess.” Varric patted her arm. “I’m coming with you.”

“Stay behind me. I’d rather it was quick, Varric.” Her teeth began to chatter halfway through the words.

To his credit he shook his surprise off though his eyes looked weary. “Let’s try not to arrange it so I have to shoot you in the back of the head, okay?”

She looked across the Chantry at the unblinking white eye painted on Cassandra’s breastplate. “I know the done thing is to meet my fate with panache but, please, you can run the minute after - I  _ want _ you to get out of here - please don’t let her-”

“I…I’ll handle it, Evelyn.” He squeezed her wrist, awkward through the gloves they both wore. “You’ve got my word.”

“Is this worse than Kirkwall?”

“Not yet.” He propped the crossbow on his shoulder. “Give it an hour.”

“An hour?” She was crying again, tears leaking out but the felandaris in the potion wouldn’t let her sob. “Ten minutes.”

“This kind of shit doesn’t go as quick as you’d think, Princess.”

“I’ve just remembered my books are still in that mouseridden hovel.” Dorian propped his staff against the wall beside her. His false calm came with a dazzling smile. “I should like to take them with me to wherever it is we’re fleeing. I’ll walk with you as far as that, if you don’t mind.” His hands came to rest gently at the top of her head. “Hold your breath, darling.”

His hands shook against her hair.

“At least everyone is terrified,” she whispered with a sniffle.

“Mhhm,” he nodded. “Now, hold your breath I’m going to make you a bit fireproof.”

Sera’s infuriated snarl cut through the tingling wash of Dorian’s magic settling into her clothes.

“Come on Beardy, you want to be a do gooder? There’s a hundred people who need you.”

“That’s an archdemon out there. That’s… something I should see to” Blackwall bowed his head as if listening for something, eyes squeezed shut. He nodded and looked up with a grim smile. “Can’t let it get away.”

"Beeeeardy, shite. I’m not fighting a dragon for some rich tits. Let’s scarper, this town’s buggered.”

Blackwall patted her shoulder but shook his head. She swiped dirty hair out of her eyes and dumped her quiver at Evelyn’s feet.

“Arsebiscuits. I knew it was gonna be some bleeding noble pisspot who gets me killed. Stupid noble shit. You’re so frigging important now you get a dragon called down on us.”

“I’m not asking you to come be killed alongside me. Go.”

Sera snarled again, grabbing Evelyn’s empty quiver from the floor and shoving in her own charmed arrows. “Shit. Shitshitshitshit. Her gracious ladybits, so gracious. The whole frigging point is to get to the rock sling and sling a rock at those ballbags, right? How’re _ you _ gonna do that by yourself. You’ll break a nail or trip on a cobble.” She held one arrow up, pointing at the tip. “Look, this goes boom all by itself, don’t muck it up and get one of us in the arse, yeah? If you shoot something that’s already on fire it goes boom twice as big.”

“I appreciate the gesture but-” Another screech from overhead and sound of flames on the roof. Ash sifted down under the great thump of wings. “Fuck.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve but only got dirt everywhere. “Will you kindly stop fucking staring at me.”

“Her ladybits said  _ fuck _ !” Sera crowed. “Can we go, now?”

Oh Maker, it was as bad as she feared. Dead everywhere, and not only dead-- torn apart. Steam curled through the frigid air above what was left of two Templars. Black ash fell from the charred edges, flaking away fingers and kneecaps. She flinched back into Varric, who steadied her.  

“You’ve got to get moving.” He urged. “Before that thing comes back this way..”

Dragonfire lit up the trees behind the Chantry.

"Don’t worry they’re long gone.” Varric said. But no one knew if he was right.  

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter 8

_Is this thing pulling me through time again?_

The walls around her rose and fell - breathed, sighed, coughed. A rough blanket rasped against her cheek but her hands were wrapped tightly and tucked between her thighs under more blankets. Evelyn pulled against the wool around her until she could make out the cart she rode in. An oilcloth stretched over the cart inches from her face. For a long time she watched a square rip in the cloth. Sickly sky and the black ends of pine boughs crawled along the hole.

Her mouth was sticky with potions again when the hole went away and a horned silhouette pulled her up into the blinding white sky. It seemed real.

Someone held her hand. Her bad hand.

Siggy crawled across the parquet of the aviary to her, his toothless mouth opened unnaturally wide. Pitiful meowing came out. He pulled himself upright by climbing her skirt with clawed fingertips. Red birds darted between them and burst into broken potion bottles.

She jerked awake. Dorian rubbed her palm with his thumbs.

“What are you doing?” She croaked, squeaked and wondered how long since she spoke.

“Maaaagic,” Dorian whispered like a panto villain. Then with a frown of concentration, “Dispelling. I can’t stop this but I can…redirect it, nudge it to one side.”

“Thank you, it does feel better.” And why had Solas never offered to do this?

“Gereon - Alexius, rather, he thought of it like breathing on a cold window then wiping the fog away. It hasn’t gone, only changed shape.” The green light of the Anchor shadowed his hollow cheeks. “You’ve got to keep this under your thumb, pardon the pun. You can’t let it take hold. Not if this is what that monster is seeking.”

“Corypheus.”

“Yes, what a name. Sounds like a fungus. Something that grows exclusively in druffalo manure. Did he speak at all or did you give him the business straight away then make your - frankly miraculous - escape?”

“It’s permanent.” The wraiths in the tunnels under Haven had dissolved as her hand curled into a fist, her knuckles grinding against the Anchor’s searing magic. “I’ve stolen a weapon I can’t use properly. All this time.”

“Pffft. Do you think we grow up knowing how to use our gift?”

Dorian pulled the scratchy blanket back over her hand and sat back from her makeshift cot. The floor of the tent was covered in the same fragrant hemlock boughs she slept on.

“A legacy of scorched curtains and broken crockery lies behind every mage. This is a matter of research, darling. Which,” here he smoothed the ends of his mustache with a sigh. “Should we ever return to the civilized world you are lucky enough to have this brilliant magical archivist.”

“What does it feel like when you use magic? Do you pull it out of the Fade like a-” she shut her eyes and searched for the right words. “A ruddy big ball of string? Does magic come out of you?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the last one you should be asking about that stuff, Princess.” Varric said with a chuckle.

She blinked and tried to sit up but something told her not to. Something was wrong with her hip, her ankle. “Varric! Dorian was - my leg I think I’m hurt, am I hurt?”

A dreadful fear spread out from her chest as Varric took too long to answer.

“Hey, hey take it easy.” He scooted closer to her pile of branches and heavy blankets. The sour smell of pine sap came with him. “A bump on the head and kind of frozen in a bunch of places but it’s all right. Honest. You’ve been in and out, Dorian was in here this morning.”

The weight on her hip moved to one side and a slimy tongue slapped against her cheek. Dog breath. _Dogs_. In the bed.

“The folks around here say it’s good to let a dog lick frostbite, helps it heal.”

“Fereldans would make one Divine if someone let them.” Evelyn pushed the spotted mabari away from her stinging ear. Even the whiskers hurt brushing against her cheek. “This dog smells like fish.”

“Everybody has fish-breath, Princess. We’re following a river now, is the latest word. You’re gonna be really tired of salmon and watercress soon.”

“Where-” she swallowed then carefully licked the cracks in her bottom lip, feeling out just how bad they were. “Where is everyone. How many are here?”

Varric smiled at her in the dark of the lopsided tent. The rueful smile he gave her whenever they spoke of Cassandra. “Relax, Princess. Nobody’s looking to chop your head off this time. Most of the sisters are on their feet, there’s about a hundred of us left counting the mages. Madame de Fer scorched a trail from Haven with the Iron Bull keeping her hem out of the mud. The rest of us only had to follow the red templars. She left ‘em like burning torches all the way up the hill.”

The dog’s foot thumped against the backs of her knees under their shared blanket as it scratched.

“I’m sorry…dog, but you’ve put my leg to sleep.”

It stepped over her side and curled up in the curve of her hips, chin resting on its paws, looking at her with a mabari’s uncanny intelligence.

“You are nice and warm, thank you.” That earned her another round of cheek-licking that she winced through. “Leave off, that’s enough, thank you thank you very much,” she muttered.

“Didn’t you have dogs growing up?” Varric wrapped the blanket over his shoulders tighter.

“Budgies.”

“What?”

“Budgerigars.” She turned the circle of brass on the dog’s collar over, ‘Winifred’ was stamped in block letters. “Very small birds, all different colors.”

“You Marchers have five names for everything.”

“They can talk, you know.” Evelyn tensed the muscles of her arms, testing the pain as she spoke. “My favorite, her name was Triana, knew twenty words of common and seven Orlesian. We’ve had three generations from her.”

Her pulse sounded loud in her head, felt itchy at her temples and the palm of the hand that still belonged to her. The potions were wearing off but she couldn’t ask for more. How many people needed them? How many had been brought along by chance or by careful planning?

“She was so sweet. She liked to cuddle up under my hair. THey learn songs, complex melodies, they sing to each other and then they pause to wait for one of us - the people - to join in with the words.”

“You like birds,” Varric laughed. He stretched out on the other side of Winifred and Evelyn realized he wasn’t just being kind or watching her, but they shared this tent. Of course, there couldn’t be enough to go around.

She told him about the aviary at home. How her birds made the house beautiful, like jewels. He asked leading questions and she talked until she was hoarse about the way Triana insisted on being tucked in last, waiting beside the nest in her cage for goodnight kisses. Triana fussed if you covered her cage completely.

“I had to leave a gap, a little corner for her to peek out and keep watch on the conservatory.”

Varric’s eyes were half-closed so she stopped. Winifred’s breath whistled the slightest bit, her spotted snout tucked into Evelyn’s ribs. When Cassandra opened the tent flap Evelyn pretended to sleep until she went away again.

“She’s gonna start with the questions, you know.” Varric didn’t move from his coccoon of blankets. His breath fogged in the faint light that filtered through the tent.

“It would be easier if I hadn’t caught up. A martyr is easier than a live…whatever she thinks I should be.”

“Andraste - if I’ve got my stories straight - was tied to a stick and set alight. The Maker’s chosen don’t have an easy time of it. Just…” he sighed and inched closer until he was cuddled up to Winifred as well. “Just tell her what she wants to hear. Tell her you had tea with Maferath’s ghost down there. Say you braided Vivial’s hair in the Fade if it will get us off this fucking mountain.”

Evelyn laughed because that was what he wanted.

 

Early in the morning the dog’s weight and warmth at her side got muddled in her dreams with Siggy’s soft baby skin under her palm, his stout legs curled up with thick feet pressed into her thighs. Cassandra was already awake but pretended not to notice her wiping her eyes on her grubby mittens.

Winifred made for a good nurse. Her blocky head appeared just under Evelyn’s outstretched hand as she clambered out of the tent, wincing at the bright sunrise.

No one had time for her. They huddled in blankets and shawls, moving from one fire to another or to the river in a hurry. Two sisters whose names she had forgotten brought her a bowl of watery soup and guided her to sit on a fallen log by the biggest fire. They told her things…things she could do nothing about, but Evelyn smiled and nodded and swore all would be well.

Cassandra prayed in the early light, looking for signs in the birds, in the water, in the clouds around the rising sun. Evelyn drank soup while Cullen snapped and snarled at a makeshift table set on the back of a cart. Nothing was good enough for him, no one was doing as they ought to. Evelyn drank soup. Winifred lapped up the last of it and the oily sliver of fish skin stuck to the inside of the cup.

“Don’t pick at it.” Dorian caught her pulling aside the mitten over her marked hand. “Or do. I don’t think it will make much difference, do you?”

“I’m going to die with this thing attached to me.”

“Cheer up, darling.” He sat next to her. Very close. At her surprised movement away he laughed. People looked. “We’re close as only cousins can be now, Trevelyan. It’s too cold for distance.”

“What does that mean?” She leaned into him, grateful for an excuse to be warmer.

“The day after you caught up we rode double on one of the brontos. You dribbling on my arm in your sleep. There wasn’t space for you in the carts.”

“But there is now.” She knew what the extra space meant. She had tripped over more than one body as she followed the faint trail up the mountain. Humps in the snow. She still wore an orange muffler and the shabby mittens she had pried away from a corpse left behind at a cold black cook fire. Alone.

Dorian nodded. “We’re losing the ones on the edges, the old and small. I'd say one or two every other night.”

“What is the plan?” There had to be a plan. She watched Cullen stomp away from his men, kicking at pine cones as he went around a clump of shabby tents. She wormed a little closer to Dorian.

“I’m sorry to tell you the plan has been to wait until you were in your right mind and then form a plan.”

“Of course it was.” Winifred whined and tried to climb into her lap. “Beg pardon,” she sighed and stood up slowly, her dog nurse hovering at her side.

“You don’t have - not to sound like a disciple, darling, but you don’t have any sort of vision to provide.” Hope barely bled through his louche drawl. “Have you?”

She looked at the huddled survivors nearby - cleaning fish, boiling water, talking around hacking coughs and blowing on their cold fingers.

“No. Excuse me.”

Winifred whined at the smell near the latrine, or at least the place where everyone else had decided was the latrine, a shallow trench out of sight.

“Sorry, girl,” she whispered and steadied herself on a heavy pine branch sticky with sap because something had eaten all the bark. She hoped it was one of the druffaloes rather than people. Winifred peed on the trunk while she waited for Evelyn to drop trou.

Muffled voices, grunts and a pained scream interrupted her. Winifred trotted away into the trees but turned around and whuffed when she stood, as if to say _don't follow_.

“Wait, sit,” she hissed, fighting her belt buckle and wet branches all at once keep her in sight. “Sit! Come! Winifred, come.”

The dog gave a warning bark when Evelyn caught up to her in a clearing. 

Blackwall was wet with melted snow and he wasn't alone. Blood spread around his feet to merge with a wet trickle slimed down the moss covered boulder he leaned against, catching his breath. In the moment before she closed her eyes and turned away she understood the dead man’s head was what made the mess on the rock. It was no one she knew.

“Can’t you people get on for one day without finding a reason to fight?” _Might as well shove them all into the next crevasse._  

“Evelyn! My l- Herald.” He turned away to pick up a brace of nugs next to his sword on the ground. “It’s not what it looks like.”

The stumpy legs of a third nug stuck out from under the body. Winifred carefully began pulling it away from the dead man’s shoulder.

He clicked his tongue at the dog. “Leave it!”

“She’s hungry, poor thing.”

“So are the rest of us and I’ve just been - just been nearly skewered for that little ratbeast.”

“What? Was he going to eat it raw out here? Is that worth a fight?” How thin were the rations while she was being dragged up the mountain in an oxcart? Blackwall’s cheekbones stood out. Dorian had looked thin but no one was skeletal.

Winifred snorted and ran away toward camp, kicking snow up behind her stub of a tail.

“Call her back,” Blackwall snapped, stumbling in her direction.

“Are you all right?” Evelyn backed up out of arm’s reach with a hand on the small knife at her belt but even as she did it she felt the uselessness of that idea. 

“Bleeding fuck, no I’m not.” He sheathed his sword with a sigh then rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his gloved hands. “Shit. Fuck.”

“Who is he?”

Blackwall shrugged, winced and pulled at the woolen blanket he had wrapped around himself in semblance of a cloak. Underneath his padded coat was torn and a dark stain spread at the edges.

“Don’t know. Never noticed him before.” He looked down at the dead hand still clenched around a short sword. “Lady Trevelyan, you should- what in the name of fuck are you doing?”

“I want to see who he is,” she took off a mitten with her teeth and knelt to better search the man’s clothes. She looked squarely at the booted feet and ragged leather trousers - not the head in its red halo.

“Maker’s Balls, woman, don’t.”

“He could be a spy, we should look him over for red lyrium.” She pinched the edge of his coat and carefully flicked it to one side.

“I said get away!” Blackwall barked. Then, palms up in surrender when she flinched back so hard she sat in the mud he said, “Beg pardon," in a milder tone. "It’s only, you don’t go digging through a comrade’s pockets like that. It's bad form.”

“Comrade? He nearly killed you.” 

Winifred’s booming bark echoed up the hill at Blackwall’s back. He stepped away with hands at his sides until Cullen lurched around the thick trees with Mathis and Cullen's shadow, Jim, at his heels plus another heavily armed brute.

“Lady Trevelyan are you hurt?” 

“No, Cullen I’m all right. Really, I’m fine. Blackwall is, he’s been cut.”

Mathis looked her over with a resigned sigh then turned to Blackwall, his hands already glowing a soft blue.

“What’s happened here? This man is dead.” Cullen rounded on Evelyn. 

“He came running out of the bushes,” she blurted out. Blackwall’s eyes held hers for a beat too long behind Cullen’s back. "He attacked us."

Cullen's thug pulled her up from the mud by an elbow. And held on. “Looks like she’s bashed his head, Commander.”

Evelyn jerked her arm free. “Yes, I beat a man to death with mittens.” She waved her hands between them for emphasis. “Dismissed.”

His lip curled on the edge of cursing when Cullen ordered him back down the hill. She memorized the shape of his nose, the color of his hair for later. The crusty bandage tied over his left eye drooped around his sneer. “Aye, Ser.”

"Blackwall had no choice. He was raving, I couldn't reason with him. Neither of us could." She stepped aside for Jim to inspect the corpse. "I've heard of people going barmy at altitude," Evelyn supplied. Lying always made her ramble, tempted to say too much. "He seemed mad, quite mad. It could be red lyrium poisoning? Do you recognize him?"

"Not really," Jim said sadly. He covered the man's face with a fold of his coat. "I think he might have come in from Amaranthine or Denerim maybe. Some of those men have good reason to want to stick a Grey Warden."

"Wardens saved Denerim," Cullen said.

Mathis stopped arguing quietly with Blackwall long enough to say, "Amaranthine was saved at the expense of the farmland outside, Rutherford. Someone loses no matter what." He took a deep breath and gave Blackwall an impatient look. "Don't be shy, Warden, let's have a butcher's."

Blackwall went red in the ears but gave in and began pulling aside layers of bloodied clothes. 

"Move a bit that way," Mathis nudged Blackwall then lightly touched the gash under his ribs. "I never turn my back on Templars," he said under his breath.

"Jim, see that this body is burned," Cullen snapped. The bruises under his eyes stood out purple compared to his flushed cheeks. "I won't risk red lyrium contagion." He turned on his heel and half-stomped, half-slid down the hill and into the dense trees.

Evelyn stared at Jim in the wake of Cullen's tantrum. Jim shrugged his way through a sloppy salute and walked away mumbling, "Looks like you've got this well in hand, Warden Blackwall. I'll just take care of...this. In a moment, Ser."

Blackwall hissed through his teeth, both hands resting on top of his head as Mathis instructed. Winifred sniffed the body again then pulled the third dead nug free and held it gently in her jaws to offer it to Evelyn. 

"Are you asking me to cook this?"

"Luck with that," Blackwall muttered.

"I can't do much more for this," Mathis told Blackwall. He inspected the wound, pressing gently and nodding to himself when no fresh blood welled up. "Keep your arm down the rest of the day, no swords or chopping wood. If it opens up again you can find me with Fiona and I'll mend it. We'll both be in Fiona's tent."

"Me?" Evelyn said. 

"You." Mathis scratched at the whiskers growing in red along his jaw. They looked at one another awkwardly, and she pushed aside the thought of his hand down the front of her trousers in the Divine's bedroom. "Now that you've got your bearings she'll want a chat."

She nodded. Time to further disappoint someone. What was one more, really?

"You know," she sighed. "Mornings used to be my favorite time of day. Now I shouldn't even go to sleep, what with all," she waved a mittened hand at the mountains, at the dead man in the snow, at the dog shaking a nug carcass until the head came free with a wet crunch. "This."

Both men gave her twin looks of disdain.

"Mornings are shit," Blackwall rearranged his shirt and coat. He frowned when Mathis stood up straight and wiped his hands clean on Blackwall's blanket cloak.

"What? It's your blood, mate," Mathis shrugged. He took in her weary slump with a wry smile. "And sorry to rush you. At least after a harrowing the Circle fed us cake."

 

 

Fiona was kind in her own way. She asked her to keep the precarious position of the mages in mind. There was no more lyrium. Not a drop. Magic drew strength from the body so mages who spent their mornings drying everyone’s blankets and coaxing fish from the river needed to eat more. The former templars were hoarding the last of their own lyrium potions and watching the mages with increasingly suspicious eyes. They knew an abomination now could run riot through a camp of weakened Templars.

Cassandra waited on the edges of the mages’ tents. Ostensibly to offer her a tin cup of soup but in fact it was only another fruitless interrogation paired with unsubtle warnings about The Maker’s Will. She wanted to fight back down the mountain through the band of heavy snow to return to Haven. Solas strode into their conversation at sunset. Evelyn resisted the temptation to plead exhaustion.

She trudged up to an overlook behind him. Where she smiled and nodded as he apologized again for his failure to help her be rid of the mark. When he urged her to "be their guide" she suggested Solas find a hat. His bald scalp was red with cold and whether or not the altitude was to blame he was going a bit mad. He gave her what was meant to be a significant squint and said nothing else. They parted in silence.

 _For good girls and good boys know when to be mum._  She hummed under her breath. Winifred bounded down to the camp ahead of her. _Eaten eaten eaten._ The tents were tied up tightly under the leaden sky. Only a few braved the rising wind to linger at rosy fires. _Bad children all get eaten._

Cullen was easy to identify even in the dark. The extravagant ruff around his shoulders made his shadow in the firelight twice as wide. He paced, rolling and unrolling a faded map of Ferelden. His soldiers nodded as they passed but left him to his anxieties. Leliana's soft (for she was always deceptively soft, even as she plotted war) goodnight to him was ignored though Cassandra at least stopped mending her breastplate long enough to mirror her words. Evelyn felt eyes on her as she sat alone by the brightest fire. Hardly surprising, none of the refugees were willing to approach her but they watched from under shawls and furs. Waiting. Suspicious.

_For silent politeness is simply the way. Eaten eaten eaten. Bad children all get eaten._

If Solas was not mad and only playing apostate silly buggers, his rationale for following the river made sense. There were the remains of a road, something wide enough to allow wagons, wide enough for trade in the past. Quarry stones had been cut out of the mountain and blocks with a fault or crack were littered along the shore. No one moved tonnes of granite _up_ a mountain unless it was worth the effort. An abandoned fort was better than tents. Even a lost thaig underground would keep them out of the weather. 

Two clumps of soldiers had merged into one. Their grimy faces caught their fire's red glow as they shivered, looking her way now and then. Cassandra crossed the empty space to bed down in their tent, muttering to herself. They watched her go with scorn, waiting for some cue from Cullen, who ignored them.

Bugger this. She hadn’t suffered through sweltering journeys by carriage with Mother’s endless speeches on how to be a lady for nothing. There hadn’t been much need for Mother’s lessons in her marriage: Sigurd kept to himself unless and until they were in society. By their second anniversary she had given up on ever charming or sulking him into compliance, settling instead for his rote chivalry in front of an audience. It was bred into him as surely as her own toothy and false public smile. But there was still a manor to run even without his help and hers had hummed like a beehive around them.

_Bow to your betters if you are their wards._

The Inquisition was a house desperate for a good tidying up. There was no reason why her life in Ostwick wasn't good enough to inform the rest of her life in the makerdamned Frostbacks. Mother's winks and nudges weren't meant to give her weapons against a former templar desperately out of his depth and puffing himself up to cover his fear but they would do in a pinch. Her father hadn't let her tag along to Council meetings to entertain her, she was meant to learn his quiet, chummy version of command.

In the morning she would smile and ask nicely but they were going to find what was at the end of the road.  _'You must be friendly, Darling, but not friends.'_ Her father had said more than once. _'Our citizens need a fine city, not my friendship.'_

Sleep was impossible. Varric snored, Cassandra's hacking cough was worse when she was laying down and Winifred reeked. The air in the tent felt sticky with stale breath and unwashed wool. Evelyn gave up and pulled her boots on, untucking the dog in the process. Winifred grumbled and squirmed into the space between the other two but didn't try to follow her outside to the fire.

"Something wrong?" Blackwall's voice barely carried in the cold wind. A small pile of shavings had piled up between his boots with several notched and pointed sticks for one of his snares lined up on the log he sat on. She sat on the other side of him, out of the wind. 

"I'm a bit restless, that's all." She wrapped her blankets tighter. 

"Glad to see you're on the mend."

"Oh, thank you," she reflexively reached toward her hair, appalled at the greasy weight of it as she tucked some behind her ear. "I'm glad to be seen. Such as I am," she said with a wince at how mealymouthed that sounded coming out. She wasn't any more or less dirty than anyone else.

"We've eaten this place down to bare rocks," Blackwall said, brushing chips of wood from his lap. "Now you're on your feet we can move."

 _Well. That's me told._ The eager flinch of nerves that had hit her as she realized he was the only one awake turned sour. People like Blackwall wanted action but she had been out of her wits in a tent for two days while he and everyone else twiddled their thumbs.

"We'll follow the river and the old road once the sun is up," she said, trying it on for size.

"Good enough." 

"You see, this is why no one wants a grey warden around when there isn't a Blight on." 

He looked up from stuffing a handful of wood shavings into his fire kit with a frown that hovered somewhere between confused and offended. 

"You aren't even shivering," she explained. "The rest of us look like something the cat dragged in and you're just peachy."

"Oh, that." He nodded and the lines between his brows relaxed. "This isn't much different from the way I spent the last few winters. More company is all."

"Why not winter in Weisshaupt?"

"It's not what I'd call warm up there, either."

"But you would have company."

"I can do without it."

She thought of the dead man from Denerim in the sunny clearing. And strangely, of the ragged bandits by the pond the day Cassandra had tracked him down. Blackwall was always up to his ankles in corpses.

"What do you think that was this morning, really?"

“This morning?” He pulled a small dagger from his boot and began sharpening it on a sliver of black stone. “He was cold, hungry, run down. You never know what will make a man snap and go selfish. Poor sod.” The slow scrape of the whetstone was almost lost in the wind through the pine trees over their heads. “You didn’t have to throw your lot in with me, Lady Trevelyan. The Commander is suspicious now.”

“The Commander is jumping at shadows.” She stirred the fire and pulled her muffler closer around her throat.

Blackwall made a noise that meant nothing either way. He looked at the blade balanced on his knee. She had never seen him at services in the Chantry down the mountain. He only ever took the Maker’s name in vain. Cassandra waited for signs, Cullen agonised over which course of action was best. The Warden _moved_ he simply got on with it.

Which she realised must be how her father had pulled Ostwick out of the Blight, how he had rebuilt after typhoons. He smiled and chatted over hypocras in the study. He charmed money and contracts seemingly out of thin air. Until one day he wasn’t sitting and smiling with his boots propped on the desk. Because things had become dangerous. Then it was time to go out into the street, down to the harbor, or up the blinding white stairs of the Bannorn’s council with Vaan at his elbow.

_'On occasion, Darling, I must grab our city by the scruff of the neck and shake. Or make them think Vaan will do it on my word. Sometimes you have to bring along a bloody big bloke.'_

“I am too cold for a careful fork and knife conversation.” She blurted out. He glanced her way but kept quiet. “It’s a hatchet or nothing. I want- would like,” she corrected herself quickly. “I have a favor to ask.”

“My flask is empty, sorry.”

She snorted a laugh, covering her mouth. “Blast. I thought you were perfect. Handy, loyal, carries strong liquor.”

He shook his head.

“I need your help. If we don’t give these people something to do they’ll turn on us. On _me_. And what's more, I think you and I both know the truth, don’t we?”

Blackwall put away his whetstone with a long sigh.

“No one has been guiding this nightmare. You’re in a ship with no rudder.” Evelyn took a deep breath. The relief of telling the truth to someone who seemed to honestly be listening made her forget her frozen toes, her numb fingers. “I am not a Herald. No one, not Andraste, a spirit or a talking dragon has been telling me what to do. If they were this might all go a bit better.” His stunned laugh was encouraging. “No one wants to hear it - now more than ever. Nothing since I walked out of the temple has been planned or orchestrated. It’s all been rotten luck and bloody-mindedness, not wanting to fail in front of a bunch of farmers."

Blackwall nodded, picked at a fingernail but said nothing. 

“But it doesn’t matter,” she whispered, on the off chance someone was awake in a tent close by. “We have to give them somewhere to go, something to move toward. When the blight was over my father and the other families built bridges. They tore down the burned buildings, made warehouses, they deepened the harbor. It kept people busy, it gave them something to do while they grieved."

She watched him closely, hoping for any sign he agreed. But he stared into the fire, his fingers laced together between his knees.

“Wardens owe nothing to anyone. You could conscript every person here, down to the spotty grooms. So if you stand behind me, willingly, who will question?”

“My lady.” He nodded.

“Was…I’m sorry was that agreement?” She turned his way. “You didn’t sign on for this in particular.”

“I agreed to stand between you and demons.” Blackwall said with solemn finality. 

“Some of these aren’t demons, Warden. Only fanatics who are getting right up my nose if I’m honest. I didn’t like being bait the other night. I want a bloody sharp hook behind me if I have to do it again.” 

"You've plenty of swords behind you, you know." It sounded as though what he meant to say was ' why me?' and she looked up at the moons as she thought about it. 

"Redcliffe." Cassandra had prowled through the door to Redcliffe's tavern to meet with Alexius and immediately taken the seat across from him leaving Evelyn to the chair at the end of the table. Fussing with the chair to be closer to Cassandra and farther from the cluster of mages sneering by the fireplace wouldn't do. She had passed by Blackwall with a glance but he _knew_ , he followed, held her chair then stood three paces behind glowering at the Tevinters like a cornered dragon. "The note from Alexius' son. Come to think of it, the very fact you stopped him giving it to me."

"He was eaten up with Blight," Blackwall scowled. "Shouldn't be getting near anybody."

"Yes, but I think if I hadn't showed her the note you wouldn't have said a word. You slipped it to me as quick as a snake - me not Cassandra." She watched from the corner of her eye as he put away his dagger and whetstone to lay down on the warmed, hardpacked earth between the log where she sat and the fire. "We can trust one another, I think. Marchers sticking together and all that."

"Fereldans think we're up to something, anyway." He arranged his patched and tattered pack behind his head, stretched out at her to soak up the heat of the flames with eyes closed. "I didn't like it, either," he said with an uncomfortable cough. "Hanging you out to dry down there with the Reds." Blackwall looked up but stopped short of meeting her eye. 

She wasn't sure what to say to that. Cullen and Cassandra had both gushed at how happy they were to see her alive after the Breach was closed but neither had argued for a moment when it became obvious in the Chantry that the Herald was expected to step outside and meet her death. 

"So you're going to take on the mantle, hmm?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Inquisitor." He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Think somebody's going to fight you for it?"

Evelyn was struck dumb a moment. She _had_ been swishing the idea around as sleep escaped her. "What makes you ask?"

"Nobility don't worry about extra muscle unless they've seen a thing they want bad enough to fight over." He had closed his eyes again but a twitch of the lips looked like he fought the urge to laugh. Everything always came back to nobles with Blackwall. As if being a Markham mudlark gave him the moral high ground when as far as she could see all it had done was make him capable of killing a man in the morning and settling down for a kip twelve hours later with an easy conscience. "That goes double and add in poison when it's Ladies rather than Lords."

"What I want is to stop those monsters without burning the world down first, so I can get shot of Ferelden." She ground her teeth to keep anything else coming out. Nothing good would come of her bursting into tears and admitting that truly if she could think of a way to run she would already be on a stolen horse headed North. But she couldn't take all of this home with the curse of the Conclave trailing behind her and still burrowing under the skin of her hand. "We'll need a signal, do you think," she asked in as nonchalant a tone as she could manage. It was time to act as though she knew what she was doing or this would never end - and what she was apparently doing was sitting by a fire in the middle of nowhere asking a Grey Warden to jump when she clicked her fingers.

"If you like but," he yawned and rubbed his eyes. "Whenever I hear you talking plummy again I'll fall in. If you can't kill them with kindness I start looking mean."

"Start?"

"Mean _er_ , then." He crossed his hands over his belt and dozed off with a mumbled _cheers_ when she flipped the long edge of her blankets out to cover his shoulder and the silverite griffin on his chest.

 

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

Solas insisted it was named Skyhold.

He had slept worse places. Still, the parts of him that would never be free of dirty, dimwitted Markham started looking out for curses and unquiet graves. But first he took two of the Sisters' mabari down to the cellars to look for darkspawn. Black damp closed around him and the sound of his torch trying to go out brought up the memory of poor old Blackwall, that chuckling fuck, sending him to fetch up a vial of darkspawn blood for the Joining.

'Don't faff about. Keep your head up and your torch lit. Find one down there and stick it - then you're straight back up here to me, lad.' There was no getting away from it once the old warden's ghost settled around his shoulders again: the scrape of a rusted darkspawn blade against Blackwall's breastplate had scared him so much he forgot everything he had bled to learn. He'd stood on that ugly outcrop of rock on the Coast and swung wildly with Blackwall's two-hander until they were all in pieces or pitched down into the waves below. The hurlock's arrow in his own shoulder had twisted with every movement as he poured potions down Blackwall's throat one after another - all for nothing. 'Old.' He had coughed, his hand going slack. 'Old. Tired.'

The dogs sniffed and whined, wanting to chase vermin behind rotten crates but there was nothing else moving in the dark. Nothing bigger than a rat.

Had Blackwall sent him down into that cave on the Storm Coast to keep him out of the way? Had he known there was only a single scraggly hurlock (missing an arm, even) underground while the rest were coming along the ridge above? Did he know deep down that this one was rotten, that he wouldn't have made a proper warden anyway?  
Blackwall had been a laughing bloke who had a dirty limerick for every occasion. Certainty had filled him, driven him along his path to his last moment. He was sure of what was right and what was worthwhile no matter the company he kept or the town he stopped in.

Resentment boiled through him.  The purpose he was desperate for had been dangled in front of him for weeks and then he'd watched helpless as it all bled out of the corner of Blackwall's mouth in the wet grass. Like every campaign, every front line for the Empress: he was thrown out half-equipped to muddle through. Always some higher-up telling him to make do.  _Show some ingenuity, Marcher. Not bad, Private. Figure something out, Seargent. Good enough, Captain._  And by the Maker's left bollock he had been ingenious. He had kept his soldiers fed and dry and he'd brought back the enemy's head on a pike when it was wanted.

"Shit."

At the sound of his voice echoing around the cellar the dogs trotted back to his circle of torchlight. They followed him up the stairs slimed with mold while he mumbled to himself. In the overgrown courtyard were a circle of nervous faces waiting for him to return. There was a gusty sigh of relief from all of them as he ground the torch out and shook his head. Nothing to fear down there.

"What would we do without you, Warden Blackwall?"

Who was he to tell them otherwise? Everyone would sleep better at night. Them because they thought he could feel monsters coming, and he slept like the dead for the first week knowing Skyhold was as cut off from the world as a place could be.

The second week Sister Nightingale got the Rookery in order and he was up late again. Every time a raven's shadow passed over him he got twitchy. Any day now a bird would come in from Weisshaupt and then he would be fucked up one side and down the other. There was nothing for it but to keep moving, keep busy, not think. So he dragged rotten beams along the length of the Great Hall. He broke ground in the overgrown garden, lent a hand putting a smithy together and he didn't look up when he was out of doors. When he couldn't lay down and be still he walked the ramparts until the the bridge beyond the portculis was irresistible.

They kept the bridge lit at either end for the guard but in between those four torches it was a long black line over empty grey air that called to him. _Get a good run up and..._  
He settled for sitting at the edge with boots dangling but a hand on one of the portculis chains. Enough to get his heart hammering, enough to make him dizzy with temptation and terror. Once he was cold all the way into his bones it was possible to ease away from the edge and stumble back behind the gate. There was a small stable in the bigger courtyard, something for guards' horses and important people's pets, probably. It served his purposes - tucked into a corner out of the wind coming over the walls. Only a handful of horses and bronto had made it up the mountain. Their quiet breath and shuffling hooves kept him company while he sacked out in the hay loft up top.

Another fortnight passed that way. Work until his bad knee tried to give out on him, take a bowl of something warm from one of the old crones helping Cook feed them all. He slept every other night and flirted with the canyon below the bridge every third. Then Trevelyan told Cullen to hang Seggrit.

Most of the time she wore nobility like a frock. It pinched at the waist and dragged along the snow behind her as she walked. On days when she deigned to get her highborn hands dirty climbing a makerforsaken mountain or tearing out the moldy guts of the old castle around them he forgot about it. That morning she was all done up in it again. Nose in the air, fingers laced and clasped in front of her so all you saw was the big gold signet catching the light of the Mark. She walked at Rutherford's side through the portculis and turned back to the crowd pressing through to watch. She bit off each word of Seggrit's doom with careful teeth.

He was sending messages to the Red Templars almost from the moment the ravens were back in the sky. Numbers, weapons, weak points in Skyhold's defenses. Her cut glass Ostie diction was mismatched with the patched leathers she wore, covered in blood stains and char marks. Cullen cinched the noose around Seggrit's hooded neck and gave him the boot off the side of the bridge. It was a good long rope so they all heard the faint pop of a clean break.

"Cut it free," she called to Cullen, already swanning her way through the crowd.

"Let 'im swing, frigging traitor! Swing 'til he rots!" One of the runaway Templars crowed and elbowed the lad next to him hoping to work up some agreement.

She pinned him with a stare. Looked him up and down slowly, eyes lingering on the horseshit caked all over his boots until he couldn't take it and cleared his throat. His mates edged away. Behind her Cullen drew his sword to do as she asked but she snapped her fingers, loud as all fuck in the nervous quiet on the bridge. He froze, looking peeved. It had probably been a long time since anyone told the Commander what's what.

"Inquisitor?"

Rather than answer she held a finger up for Cullen to wait, all the while still staring at the lad's shitty boots. Finally she swallowed and looked him in the face, disgust coloring her plummy voice. "You will fetch a spade and a mount from Master Dennett. Bury the body in the clearing below the first lookout. At the  _proper_  depth. Barbarism is no longer the norm, Ser."

The contempt she laid on  _Ser_  made the hairs on his arms stand up.

 

He was still thinking about it at nightfall. Varric put together a Wicked Grace tourney then wandered between the games keeping an eye on the wagers. Seggrit hadn't been a popular bloke but all the same the hanging made the civilians jumpy. Soldiers needed no excuse to play cards. With not a drop to drink the only distractions on offer were gambling or sex. He wasn't interested in either of those sober; he felt his way up the dark stairs to the library instead. 

It wasn't too bad if you didn't mind a few mites and a lot of dust - as long as Dorian wasn't hogging the place. Smarmy dandy could worry the hair off a dog when he was in a mood. And he was always in a mood. Trevelyan babied him too much. _Dorian darling, Dorian sweetheart, love._ Words that meant nothing when he had been the kind of man who took a woman in his bed for granted. When he was the Captain, broad and dashing in his uniform. Dark hair and blue eyes had made it easy enough to cadge a tavern girl into his lap, into a hand under her skirt, into his room. He called them _lamb_ , or _sweet_. If he’d overshot the mark, was too drunk to thrust into her reliably, he would lie back while she rode him, breasts bouncing, hair tickling his bollocks when she tilted her head back, squealing with delight.

He pulled down one of the witchlights Dorian demanded everyone use near the books. It pulsed in its wire cage like the mark climbing up Trevelyan's arm. 

There wasn't anything like fucking highborn women. They smelled good enough to eat, they laughed and flirted all day. Well. Not at present. Nobody in Skyhold smelled good for long. Cook had rendered out the fat from a druffalo after the dogs ate their fill and it made something that could be called soap, but it still reeked of the source. He played the witchlight's blue glow over a shelf of books printed in Orlais. Mostly etiquette guides. 

 _Where were these fifteen years ago when I needed them?_  Some things he picked up quick after making a mistake that left a superior officer or a shopkeeper gasping with offence. Don't lay a mask on a table facing down, twist the bottle after you pour so wine doesn't drip on the tablecloth.  _Still never figured out how to eat a whole artichoke with a knife and fork._

 _"-when the Graces are present and given their proper place, gentlemen have no need of swords or vulgar physic"_  the words swapped themselves around between the page and the part of his brain that used to think in Orlesian for days at a time. His sword was what got him to Val Royeaux's tables, though. Blood and broken bones earned him every promotion: a nicer boarding house, a uniform with more gold braid. But soirees and salons - once he elbowed his way in- pretended not to be impressed by such things. General's wives had watched him from behind masks probably waiting for him to skewer a valet or pull a serving girl into his lap before the sorbet. He wasn't an idiot. Not sober, at least. Everyone knew you minded your p's and q's until after supper, until somebody said "Well, let's leave it to the young people, my dear." After midnight had been the time to see just how far he could get up the social ladder.

Bugger it. He chose a thin book of Ferelden history and pocketed the witchlight. It was enough to read by in the stable as long as he kept it close to the page. He woke himself up snoring later with the book over his face, still in his clothes and stretched out over a few bales of hay in the loft. The stalls below were dark except for a faint green glow.  

Trevelyan sat slumped on the top rail of her gelding's stall, nose to nose with the horse and scratching its cheeks. She didn't look when he came creaking down the stairs with a blanket wrapped over his shoulders.  

"If you've come down to pat my back about Seggrit, Leliana has already complimented me on my newfound ruthlessness," she said quietly. 

"It's late, my lady."

"Is it?" She combed her fingers through Whim's mane and worked a knot free. "We can't tell anything but sun up or sun down here. We're regressing to beasts." She scowled and picked at the rough chestnut hair slowly. 

He let a decent minute pass and didn't ask if there was something she needed from him specifically. Because if she was only there to nuzzle the horses he wanted sleep. "It gets easier." He offered. "Don't know if that's a comfort or not. But you think about it less the more it happens."

"I don't feel guilty, Blackwall. I am furious we fed and sheltered him for so long. What is the point of risking my life for that...prat. Rat. Traitor." She stepped down from the gate and wiped her hands on the back of her trousers. "How many of those do I have?"

"I don't follow, my lady."

"Evelyn." she corrected him absently. "How many lives am I owed? I didn't ultimately do the honorable thing in Haven but I was willing to. I would be dead and he lived - stealing from us and waiting to betray us. From a certain perspective his life was mine. If I had thought of it this morning I would have told Cullen to feed his bones to the dogs."

"That's one way to get your investment back," he leaned a shoulder against a dry part of the crumbling stable door to take some weight off his knee.

"I am tired of watching them be beastly to one another and wondering why anyone would bother to save them. Am I meant to leap into the dragon's jaws  _every_  time or only when it will be dramatic?" She propped her hands on her hips and paced around what was left of the fire from that morning. "You shouldn't be out here, it isn't seemly."

"Anybody who thinks we're up to no good out here is barmy." He sat on an old crate and watched her go around in circles until what he'd said sunk in. Not that he was opposed to fucking in a barn, mind. It wouldn't be his first or second choice but it would do in a pinch. 

"No, don't be-" she shook her head and pushed loose hair out of her eyes again, flustered.

"Blackwall." The fancy turn she put on the stolen name reminded him of the ladies who would come to Markham to buy lace from his mum. There were sounds rich women stepped over like a puddle in the road. "You shouldn't be sleeping in a stable. Take quarters over the garden, there are a few rooms ready. Not cozy, yet, but livable."

"I'm all right out here."

"Solas says we are in for a blizzard."

"We've been lucky so far." 

She made another trip around the fire pit and turned back to look at him. Her hair piled up in the crook of her neck and Maker, did he want to bury his nose there. "I know your version of roughing it is different than mine but all the same. Why won't you sleep indoors?"

 _Because you people make me nervous. Because lies pile up like dead leaves when I have to make conversation with you._ "I'm comfortable here."

"If you are in a proper room in a proper bed it will be one less thing on my list of worries."

"Strike me off, my lady. A proper bed in proper quarters now will only make me soft when we're back in the field."

"You aren't at risk of going soft," she said with a twitch of her eyebrows and a long look that made him stand up straighter. "I can have someone replace the bed with hay bales or you can sleep on the floor if it helps. Don't be a berk. I am not trying to domesticate you."

Her getting shirty with him was enough to heat his blood a bit. A miracle. Even the _thought_ of someone touching him made him tired lately. Too tired even to jerk off. It was all the people milling around inside Skyhold's walls, penned in too close. The expectation and disappointment in their eyes made him want to scream the truth in their haggard faces so they would finally leave him alone. I am Thom Rainier, he would say. He would shave and cut his hair close then lay his head on the block and thank her for finally getting it over with. Which jumped-up Chantry lad would she send to bury his carcass down the hill next to Seggrit?

"I didn't come down to make cow's eyes at you, more's the pity." She interrupted his grim fantasy. "There isn't any more lyrium."

Bugger. Sera knew a casteless dwarf who ran lyrium between Orzammar and Redcliffe. Always with a few heavies and a bard. He bit his tongue, though. Smuggling was dirty dangerous work but he couldn't afford to burn up any escape route no matter how much he would hate the job. "Where was the Inquisition buying it before?"

"Varric knows someone who knows someone." Evelyn waved a hand dismissively. She didn't know, and didn't care to know, what was involved in keeping a bunch of mages tame. "Now that Leliana has the birds moving again, we have reports of rifts and I never thought I would say this but we have also run out of elfroot. Adan puts it in bloody _everything_." 

He wrapped up tighter in his blanket just to give himself a way to fidget. 

"We should be able to make arrangements for food through the winter while we are at it."

"You're taking Cassandra, then?"

"As if she would let me out of her sight," Evelyn sighed. 

He couldn't be still any longer. The horses needed fresh water anyway. "Cassandra _should_ go along. She's enough muscle. More than enough." He didn't look up to see if she was surprised by him turning her down. "You said it yourself," he picked up a bucket and called back over his shoulder as he went outside. "The templars are twitchy and your mages are one sneeze away from filling this place with demons. If it goes pear-shaped I should be here."

He waved three ravens away from the well to refill the bucket. They fussed but went back to the rookery where they belonged. Lights were burning up there, all night every night. When a bird finally came in from the Anderfels, would it be the rope and the bridge for him, too? He shut the stable door behind himself, trying not to slosh water on his leg. She was angry. Not enough to say something shirty but enough to make the mark on her hand sizzle in the quiet. "Do you want the only authority up here to be Cullen and Leliana?" he tried. "They'll each take a side and you'll come back to a pile of ash."

"Dennett will need to have the horses ready by noon." She was all business again. The Herald didn't ask twice. Ever. "I should gather up-" she stopped and looked around like she'd forgotten something. "Well, it won't take long to be ready. I've nothing but the clothes on my back and no rucksack to carry anything."

"Take mine," he blurted out. She glanced at him in her funny way. Like there were words written on the inside of his skull and she could read them if she caught his eye from the right angle. It was the same look she'd shot over Cullen's shoulder as they all stood over Bert's body still melting the snow around him. She had known then something was up. He could see it but she lied for him anyway. 

"I can't," she shook her head.

"Course you can." He rummaged in the dark tack room and brought it to the lopsided workbench Dennett used for mending. "I'm staying put. Here, there's things in here you won't need." His fire kit, two lengths of fishing line and hooks, his spare sharpening stone. His other spares. She looked surprised by the pile of things he dug out of the pockets until he gave up and turned the damned thing over and shook it.  

She laughed and stirred through the mess with careful fingers until she found the pebble Sera had given him. It was shaped like a cock. She held it up to the weak light from a lamp by the stalls. 

He brushed the walnut shells and stray pieces of beeswax onto the floor. "There's no telling what's in there." Before he could get it away she found the old vial he'd carried almost four years now. She shook it and his stomach dropped. "Careful," he managed to say around the sudden lump in his throat. "Don't open it."

"Is this," she squinted and tilted the sludge inside back and forth. "Is this blood?" She put it down, startled. "Is it darkspawn blood?"

"It has its uses for us. Dangerous, though." He fell back on the same old vague nugshit. Just like everyone else she got big-eyed and nervous at the thought of mysterious warden blood magic. Didn't make sense. There was nothing more to killing darkspawn than anything else with bones and a hide. Stab it until it stopped moving.

"Thank you," she said. "For the loan. I'll bring it back in one piece."

"It's nothing." He shrugged. "I'm staying put," he said again, trying the lie on for size and knowing in the end cowardice would send him running.

 

 

Giving away his pack meant that a week later when the lyrium showed up he had to scramble for a new one himself. No word from Weisshaupt. Lyrium delivery was the start of a supply line and that meant more people in the walls. The days of watery mutton stew would be over soon. Josephine had two branches of the Guerlain family on the hook for loans - on the promise of a place at the castle when it was up to noble standards.  Orlesians coming up the mountain felt like a slowly tightening noose.

He rolled his blankets tighter until they would fit in a saddlebag and told himself coming back down to Haven with the Chargers looked normal. He was the helpful warden, wasn't he? Always ready when something needed doing. Even if the thing was riding back down the mountain to recover what they could from the battlefield and the Chantry. 

"Hey, Big Guy?" Krem said hesitantly as they crested the last hill.

"Yes, Krem." Every one of Iron Bull's company had taken to calling him that. It rankled but there wasn't anything to be done about it. It didn't even make sense when he was riding between the one they called Grim, who was a head taller and a hand wider than him and Bull sitting bareback on a bronto for Makersake. Didn't matter what they called him today, they wouldn't be calling him anything tomorrow. Because he would be halfway to Redcliffe by dawn and on a ship bound for anywhere north the next day. 

"You feeling all right? You look nervy." Krem twisted in his saddle to check back the way they'd come. 

"Yes, Krem." He rubbed the bridge of his nose and hoped he looked as worn down as he felt. 

"It's just I like to see them coming," Krem groused under Bull's amused squint. 

"No darkspawn, lad." he sighed. "Nothing you need to concern yourself with. " Who knew how a warden hearing his calling behaved? Looking tired and avoiding questions must be close enough. Weary down to his bones was the easiest part of the lie. The Chargers didn't ask nosy questions after he dropped hints. They let Krem do it for them. He stretched and thought of Sera. Nosy, rude, bristly and loud as a hart in heat. She was going to be spitting mad when she came back and he was gone. Hadn't even left her a note, coward that he was.

Haven looked like any other patch of land where people had been to lined up to beat one another to death. The cabins and sheds he spent a month building were burnt black skeletons sticking up out of snow. Haven's lake was filled in with rubble that bristled with twinkling red. That was different. 

"Leave anything that looks like it's got lyrium growing on it." Dalish called, already pushing snow out of her way with magic. As if they needed to be told not to touch the stuff. He shrugged off an offer of help and struck out on his own down the eastern slope of the avalanche. Winter meant bodies hadn't rotted but in some ways it was worse to see a face intact. In summer scavengers scattered bones in a day, maybe two, it was rotted meat without names. 

"Watch where you walk, Blackwall, may be knives and shit pointed up under all this snow," Bull yelled across a pile of rock.

 _Big grey mother hen._ He waved over one shoulder but kept moving. What was left of Evelyn's cabin was pushed to one side by fallen trees but he found a place to squeeze inside. A smashed trunk and the charred remains of a bed didn't offer up anything. Shit. There was gold in here, if some scavenger hadn't gone through the place already. _Three for the ship. Four if I don't want to eat weevils in my peas from here to Antiva. Another four gets a horse. Ten. Ten for me and the rest I'll hand over._  He slapped ash from his gloves and wondered why he hadn't looked in the most obvious place first, for there hung her pack behind the door. Neat on a peg, straps cinched tight.

Her things were tidy when he opened her pack in the light falling through the ruined window. The woolen jumper at the top was stale-smelling but no moths flew out. Drawstring bags separated combs and soap from a stash of hardtack and dried fruit. One bag was stuffed full of hankies folded into squares. She always had one ready and Sera was forever taking the piss about that. He put them all back as he'd found them. 

The money was there. Just sitting there. A lump between a thin shawl and a book to identify poisonous plants. He pried the stiff leather pouch open. Fucking nobles. _Can't even be bothered to hide their gold like a normal person._ He poured coins into his hand for a fast count and pocketed twelve gold then returned the rest. The bottom of her pack held a bowl, spoon and knife and another linen bag that was full of beaded bracelets and necklaces - bits of twine twisted and knotted into patterns that meant something to hedge witches. People on the road offered the Herald tokens or charms and she took them gladly. Though she said later she wasn't superstitious she wore them in pairs and sometimes more, all on her unmarked wrist. As they came closer to the morning of the Breach he had noticed them catching the sun. The only other thing was a thick folio of letters sealed with her signet. He noted the names: 'Bann Arto Trevelyan of Bowman's Bastion, Ostwick', 'Pietro Moret care of his vessel Winged Halla', one addressed with nothing but 'Siggy'. A scrap of loose parchment read, 'Sir or Madam, in the event of my death please see these letters to a member of the Inquisition. If there is no longer an Inquisition leadership send them by courier and House Trevelyan will pay you in gold for your kindness. E. Trevelyan'.

By sunset the Chargers dug up a wagon's worth of smithy tools, potions, crates of salted herring, bear pelts and even found three moggies grateful for the fire Skinner built. His horse was tied farthest out on the line. Easier to slip away after the rest of them were asleep.

He should have known it wouldn't pan out. The curse he carried reared its ugly head along with the second moon and his plan went to shit with the arrival of two wagons driven by a dwarf and a girl who had a Dalish accent as thick as porridge when she announced herself as one of the Sabrae clan. 

"Surely this is The Iron Bull!" she called over her mule's head. "Cabot and I've been sent round by your Herald. Her Highness says you lot have taken over the mountain, and needing a victualer?"

"We're going back in a few days if you want to come along," Bull said amiably, already pulling coins from the pouch on his hip. "Got anything to drink in those casks?"

Wine hit him like a mailed fist. His belt buckle had been telling him he was a stone lighter thanks to short rations in Skyhold and he'd been dry so long one drink may as well have been four. He had four, or sixteen if the maths was right, and then there was a moggy on his chest while he was laid up by the fire telling stories until he went hoarse. Bull named the cats One, Two, and Backup. That struck him as so funny he laughed until tears ran down his temples. Not for the first time he cursed the shit luck that kept him from getting in with mercs like the Chargers after Orlais. They didn't fall all over each other to be best mates but they didn't have to sleep with one eye open, either. 

Blocking the light of the fire with his hand let him squint up at the stars. The hilt of Judex was past the first moon now. Time to be gone but no one looked in a hurry to crawl into tents so he took the cup Bull passed him. No point being rude.

Cabot woke them with rashers and eggs piled onto brown bread. He ate three helpings. Supper was just as good before the wine came out again. This time he paid with Evelyn's silver. She wouldn't mind, he reasoned. Nobles didn't give a shit about money in the small amounts. There was always more to be had, just write a letter to Daddy. The Chargers toasted him with a bawdy song that he declined to dance to. Only seemed right to treat them since he was going to do a runner as soon as they were asleep. 

In the morning One and Backup were cuddled up on either side of his neck, noses under his beard. _You drunken sod. Get your arse up and tell Bull there are darkspawn to see to and then get to Redcliffe._ He broke down the tent still chewing himself out in his head. He reminded himself what a shitty excuse this was for going to the gallows: 'I was drunk and there were fresh eggs for breakfast every morning.' Of course Bull noticed, Bull noticed everything, but he said nothing just watched him as they prepared to return to Skyhold. 

 _Turn around, you sorry bastard._ The wagon was full up. He double-checked the cords holding an oilcloth over the top. 

Cabot had friends coming along the road. Wary. They had been jumped before by Templars and mages alike and the crone driving the cart  wasn't impressed with Cabot's papers.

"No gold, no go." She spat, her iron grey hair frizzing around her tattooed ears. 

"The Inquisition will keep their word. Payment as arrranged by The Herald." He turned so the Griffin on his chest could be seen. 

"It ain't been arranged. Cabot's got a letter, not gold or even silver. Letter doesn't buy shit." 

Cabot pointed his way.  "You can wait until somebody takes your stock or you can come with us and sell it.  That warden there can conscript it out from under you. 

"Warden?" She sucked her teeth and sized him up. His ears burned. "You're the last of them, then.  Nobody's laid eyes on one all year."

Bull slapped him on the shoulder hard enough to rattle his teeth. "This outfit's got a lot of rare finds, ma'am. Warden Blackwall isn't the conscription type." Bull's hand squeezed until the bones in his shoulder ground together. "I hope you brought a lot of wine because tonight we owe him a drink."

"I don't bother with wine, young man," she said with a haughty sniff. "It's spirits and blood lotus or do without. "

"Ma'am," Bull smiled. "You humans must be wearing off on me. This is love at first sight."

In the end he walked back across the bridge to Skyhold not just because he was drunk on rotgut bourbon, or for fresh eggs at breakfast, but because another winter on his own was worse than the noose.

 


End file.
